PGDP stands for Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders. PGDP has preserved over 10,000 print titles, from a wide range of subjects, in multiple languages, by bringing them into digital plain text and html forms. Project Gutenberg is the oldest source of free books on the web. Thousands of online volunteers from all over the world produce PGDP's digital texts from scanned originals.

Already signed up on PGDP and ready to join Team Reed? To go to the PGDP site's team page for Team Reed, click THIS LINK

Ready to explore PGDP for yourself? Go to the PGDP portal, HERE. To register as a volunteer, scan down the page to the "How You Can Help" section. A registration link appears there.

Background There are multiple volunteer roles with PGDP, but beginners start with first-pass, page by page online editing of plain text OCR output against its scanned original. A PDF manual, a wiki and a quiz on PGDP proofing basics get you started. Mentors and project managers give feedback on your first efforts, and as often as you ask thereafter.

Original images vary considerably, but here's a snippet of one I worked on. The PGDP proofing interface allows you to adjust the zoom.

A snippet of PGDP plain text OCR output looks like this.

Beginners' material is simple, clear and in English. Beginners, however, are not restricted to "beginners material". You can even start  with a "hard" project. In the present setup, there are three rounds of proofreading, followed by two rounds of formatting, followed by post-processing to get the material into final shape. Beginners are restricted to the first proofreading round, which in practice means that proofreaders can concentrate on proofreading, and later formatters can concentrate on formatting confident that the material has been thoroughly proofread. Progression to later rounds such as the third proofreading round P3, requires a demontrated competence in P2, and presumably this also holds for the formatting rounds. As always, you choose what you want to work on from the available texts (usually around 100). 

As a PGDP volunteer, I've worked on

oral histories of surviving African-American slaves collected in the 1930's (click to view larger image)

architecture texts in Latin (click to view larger image)

16th century poetry, a census of 18th century French post offices, and a 17th century English dictionary.

As the world's stores of knowledge move from print to digital media, print material in the public domain needs helpers and champions to see it safely, fully and accurately across to the other shore. Anybody want to help field a Team Reed in that effort? If so, register as a volunteer on the PGDP site, and contact PGDP user ""Katie_B"". 16 Mar 2007.

I (AH) have been  the only contibuting member of Team Reed for over a year now. I submitted Money by Foster & Catchings (published in 1923) to their copyright clearance process. The answer: Notes from the clearance team: We cannot approve material published after 1922 unless it meets our special criteria for copyright non-renewal (Rule 6).--Juliet