About

What Bookp(h)ile is

We buy books. A lot of them. And they’re taking over our lives.

Bookp(h)ile is a place for me to keep track of the books I get to supply Distributed Proofreaders (DP), a leading provider of content to Project Gutenberg (PG), an archive of (mostly) copyright-free electronic texts.

DP’s process for producing etexts consists of comparing page scans to the output from an OCR program — over the internet, one page at a time. (It’s a great way to volunteer to a useful project without spending an awful lot of time. All you need to participate is a computer and a willingness to be a little bit nit-picky.) DP gets its texts from people like me — we find books that are not in the PG archive, scan them, OCR them, and make them available at DP.

I hope to use this blog(?) to help me keep track of what I have (over 400 clearances at last count, and 57 projects posted to PG — a babe in the woods compared to several people) and where it is in the process. If you’re coming here from DP, you can also use it to see what’s on my plate, or make suggestions about what you’d like to see at DP sooner rather than later.

What Bookp(h)ile isn’t

It’s not a library catalogue, nor a reference site. I get nearly all the information about the book from online sources, which may not always be accurate.

It’s not a sales venue. These books aren’t for sale here. Neither do I have any idea what yours is worth.

(And no, I have not read everything I list here.)

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Christine Davis for Ultimate Tag Warrior, and Peter Kashou for tonus. (I edited it heavily, so any wonkiness is my fault).

Thanks especially to Bill for being such a willing accomplice in sourcing, scanning and preparing the books. There’s nothing like having a good rationalization for buying old books.