scanned books repositories?

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StevePoling
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scanned books repositories?

Post by StevePoling »

Hello all,

As we all know, scanning for redistribution of copyrighted works is a no-no. But there is nothing unlawful about scanning works that have entered the public domain (or gaining permission) and redistributing them. I am aware of several repositories of free (as in freedom) ebooks. Gutenberg.org, Archive.org, http://drmfree.calibre-ebook.com/by/genre, http://www.baen.com/Library/, http://www.ccel.org/

However, I'm absolutely certain that I've omitted several worthy ebooks repositories. Would it make sense for someone (or someones) to compile a list of all known drm-free ebook repositories?

I believe that were the book scanning community to be aware of these repositories, we would know where to submit our freely-distributable book scans. And it would allow a larger, more interested audience to benefit from our labor of love.

ERGO, does anyone know of any (legal) scanned-books sites?

Cordially,

steve
Simple Simon
Posts: 1
Joined: 18 Jun 2013, 10:28
E-book readers owned: many
Number of books owned: 10
Country: Canada

Re: scanned books repositories?

Post by Simple Simon »

Well, I'm not sure if this is what you had in mind, since we're not strictly a scanned books repository.

I am the co-founder and Site Admin for DPC (Distributed Proofreaders Canada), an all-volunteer cooperative workflow that takes books that are public domain in Canada and scans, OCRs, proofs, formats, re-assembles, and finalizes the pages of a book into an eBook, then distributes them free to the world.

You can find our book production site at http://www.pgdpcanada.net, and our eBook display site at
Faded Page http://www.fadedpage.com

Do come and have a look. We are loosely affiliated with the Project Gutenberg community.

We use the kind of electronic books your members produce (scansets) as input, drawing them from TIA, Google Books and other well-known sources. But we go much further than scansets, producing eBooks that are fully proofed and edited, even catching errors in the original books. Currently we're adding 25-35 new eBooks monthly to our catalogue, and we expect output to rise sharply later this year.

I'd be happy to discuss the idea of using your output as our input with DIY members--email me at starlink AT rogers.com (please replace the AT with @).

While I'd love to have a DIY scanner at our disposal, I'm not sufficiently expert at the crafts to build one--perhaps one of our members?...

Best regards

Simple Simon
markvdb
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Joined: 28 Dec 2010, 18:45
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Country: Belgium

Re: scanned books repositories?

Post by markvdb »

Classical musicians, you want to have a look at http://imslp.org .
Mark
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abmartin
Posts: 79
Joined: 15 Sep 2010, 15:33
Number of books owned: 2000
Country: USA
Location: Ohio

Re: scanned books repositories?

Post by abmartin »

imslp is outstanding! It's been aruond for such a long time. (albeit first as the Petrucci Music Library) They've even branched off into reprints! I wish more repositories would offer that service. (And it could be a money spinner for some of the library archives, since with POD services, it's very little work after the images are prepared for display.)

Also for music folks: http://www.vifamusik.de/ - A nice aggegator of music-related materials
Bach Fans: http://www.bach-digital.de
Mozart Fans: http://dme.mozarteum.at

Some of my favorite repositories:
http://www.e-rara.ch/ - A consortium of Swiss libraries have released thousands of historic prints. Their 16th century collection is marvelous. For DIYbookscanner folks, there is also an excellent collection of first edition historical science books.
http://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/ - The manuscript equivalent.
http://www.digitale-sammlungen.de/ - The digital collections of the Bavarian State Library
http://www.prdl.org/ - A great database/aggregator of Reformation and Post-Reformation writings. (Lots of original scans are available) The main sources are GB, IA, and the others I have already listed.
http://hardenberg.jalb.de/index.php - Another good 16th century collection

I believe all of those I listed have appropriate "free-to-use" terms. (Most of them have non-commercial clauses, however)

In terms of places where we can upload, the Internet Archive is the place.
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