Volunteers don't have a quota to fill, but it is recommended they do a page a
day if possible. It doesn't seem much, but with hundreds of volunteers it really
adds up. In 2003, about 250-300 people were working each day all over the world,
producing a daily total of 2,500-3,000 pages, the equivalent of two pages a
minute. In 2004, the average was 300-400 proofreaders participating each day,
and finishing 4,000-7,000 pages per day, the equivalent of four pages a minute.
The number of books that have been processed through Distributed Proofreaders
has grown fast, with a total of 3,000 books in February 2004, 5,000 books in
October 2004 and 7,000 books in May 2005, 8,000 books in February 2006 and
10,000 books in March 2007, with five books produced per day and 52,000
volunteers in December 2007.
From the website one can access a program that allows several proofreaders to be
working on the same book at the same time, each proofreading on different pages.
This significantly speeds up the proofreading process. Volunteers register and
receive detailed instructions. For example, words in bold, italic or underlined,
or footnotes are always treated the same way for any book. A discussion forum
allows them to ask questions or seek help at any time. A project manager
oversees the progress of a particular book through its different steps on the
website.
The website gives a full list of the books that are: a) completed, i.e.
processed through the site and posted to Project Gutenberg; b) in progress, i.e.
processed through the site but not yet posted, because currently going through
their final proofreading and assembly; c) being proofread, i.e. currently being
processed. On August 3, 2005, 7,639 books were completed, 1,250 books were in
progress and 831 books were being proofread. On May 1st, 2008, 13,039 books were
completed, 1,840 books were in progress and 1,000 books were being proofread.
Each time a volunteer (proofreader) goes to the website, s/he chooses a book,
any book. One page of the book appears in two forms side by side: the scanned
image of one page and the text from that image (as produced by OCR software).
The proofreader can easily compare both versions, note the differences and fix
them. OCR is usually 99% accurate, which makes for about 10 corrections a page.
The proofreader saves each page as it is completed and can then either stop work
or do another. The books are proofread twice, and the second time only by
experienced proofreaders. All the pages of the book are then formatted, combined
and assembled by post-processors to make an eBook. The eBook is now ready to be
posted with an index entry (title, subtitle, author, eBook number and character
set) for the database. Indexers go on with the cataloging process (author's
dates of birth and death, Library of Congress classification, etc.) after the
release.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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