last changed Wednesday, December 31, 2008

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Site Concept
Distributed Proofreaders provides a web-based method to ease the conversion of Public Domain books into e-books. By dividing the workload into individual pages, many volunteers can work on a book at the same time, which significantly speeds up the creation process.

During proofreading, volunteers are presented with a scanned page image and the corresponding OCR text on a single web page. This allows the text to be easily compared to the image, proofread, and sent back to the site. A second volunteer is then presented with the first volunteer's work and the same page image, verifies and corrects the work as necessary, and submits it back to the site. The book then similarly progresses through two formatting rounds using the same web interface.

Once all the pages have completed these steps, a post-processor carefully assembles them into an e-book, optionally makes it available to interested parties for 'smooth reading', and submits it to the Project Gutenberg archive.

How You Can Help

• Register with the site as a volunteer.
• Read the introductory email you receive and the Beginning Proofreader's FAQ.
• Confirm your registration, sign in, choose a project, and try proofreading a page or two!

Unregistered guests are invited to participate in Smooth Reading.

Remember that there is no commitment expected on this site beyond the understanding that you do your best.

Proofread as often or as seldom as you like, and as many or as few pages as you like. We encourage people to do 'a page a day', but it's entirely up to you! We hope you will join us in our mission of 'preserving the literary history of the world in a freely available form for everyone to use'.

There are many other ways to contribute to the site, including managing projects, providing content, or even helping develop improvements to the site! Join other members of our community in the Forums to discuss these and many other topics.

14,761 in Completed. These books have been processed through our site and posted to the Project Gutenberg archive.

2,158 In Progress. These books are undergoing their final checks before being assembled into a completed e-book.

1,001 in Proofreading. These books are currently being processed through our site; sign in and start helping!

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Distributed Proofreaders was founded in 2000 by Charles Franks to support the digitization of Public Domain books. Originally conceived to assist Project Gutenberg (PG), Distributed Proofreaders (DP) is now the main source of PG e-books. In 2002, Distributed Proofreaders became an official PG site. In May 2006, Distributed Proofreaders became a separate legal entity and continues to maintain a strong relationship with PG.