Until a few days ago, Bender's proverb book was not available at Internet Archive, but I put it there! I had acquired a copy of this from a used bookstore, and it just recently entered the public domain: because the book was published in 1924, that means it is no longer subject to U.S. copyright law. That made it possible for me to transcribe the book, and then upload it to Internet Archive so that everybody can have access!
The way I did this was just to type out the book. I couldn't scan the pages because the booklet is very fragile, and the scanner we have at home is only for loose pages, not for books. You can see how the Internet Archive scans books; it's amazing to watch:
At the Internet Archive, this is how we digitize a book.
— Internet Archive (@internetarchive) February 6, 2021
We never destroy a book by cutting off its binding.
Instead, we digitize it the hard way--one page at a time.#digitalbooks pic.twitter.com/ZqPw3w41I5
Anyway, I enjoy typing, and the book is not long, so typing it was easy; the book turned out to be 5700 words long. I did a more-or-less "diplomatic" transcription as it's called. There were a few minor typos (punctuation, not in the actual words), so I did not correct those minor errors but just typed them as I found them. I typed it as a GoogleDoc (which is also public), exported it as a PDF, and then uploaded it to the Internet Archive; the upload option is in the upper right-hand corner. They walk you through the process step by step; it's really easy!
When you first upload the file, it doesn't process right away. I uploaded the file before I went to bed one night, and the next morning, it had processed: you can page through my PDF document just like you page through any of the books at the Internet Archive!
It's even searchable: how awesome is that? Here are elephants:
I should also note that Bender is also the author of a very useful collection of folktales that he collected during his 20 years as a missionary in Cameroon: African Jungle Tales. This book is not available at the Internet Archive, but it is available at Hathi Trust. Like the book of proverbs, this is part of the "Little Blue Book" series of missionary publications from the early 20th-century.
Bender's little book of proverbs is also available at Hathi Trust, but they are not as user-friendly as Internet Archive (they don't let you download the whole book as a PDF unless you are a member of one of their participating institutions, etc.). So, now Bender's book is both at Internet Archive and at Hathi Trust, and I also learned how to add documents to Internet Archive. Yay!
by C. J. Bender
Next step: I want to upload all the books I have published with Pressbooks and also books I published independently as PDFs before I discovered Pressbooks. That is going to be fun to do, book by book! :-)
Meanwhile, I'm also working on an African proverbs project, picking out favorite proverbs to illustrate on slides. You can see how that is taking shape at my other blog: African Proverbs. Slowly but surely, they are starting to accumulate. You can see a full-screen view of the slideshow, or an embedded version below:
No comments:
Post a Comment
Comments are limited to Google accounts. You can also email me at laurakgibbs@gmail.com or find me at Twitter, @OnlineCrsLady.