Help Wanted
If you decide that having the most important public domain Christian
Classic books on the Internet is a goal you are willing to contribute
some of your time toward, here are some volunteer tasks you might be
able to take on.
Unfortunately, I don't have much time for training or supervision of
volunteers, so you will have to select your own project and be
self-motivated and able to figure out what needs to be done from the
brief descriptions here.
Format a book
You could format a book in Microsoft Word that is currently only
available as a text file. The formatting involves applying paragraph
styles appropriately, handling footnotes, etc. When the book is
formatted in Word, it can be saved in RTF format and automatically
converted to HTML, text, postscript, etc. Guidelines are available.
Type a book
I will send you a photocopy of a good public-domain book. You type
it and send back the electronic version. Some good projects waiting
to be done: Richard Baxter, Jonathan Edwards, Murray, F.B. Meyer, An
Unknown Christian, Gregory the Great (Morals), many more...
Your time as a typist will be best used by typing something that
wouldn't scan well.
Scan a book
If you have a scanner and OCR software, I could again send you a
photocopy of a book to work on. After scanning and OCR, you could
spell-check the book, format it, and print it out. Read the printout,
circling anything that doesn't seem right, and make corrections by
referring to the original. Mail the electronic version to me.
Be sure to verify that the work is no longer in copyright before
proceeding. If you scan a work that is not in the public domain, your
work will have been wasted (not to mention illegal). Works
published 75 years ago or more are public domain in this country.
Bibliographic Research
I have a working list of books I'd like
to have on the CCEL. You could search for particular, public domain
editions of the books mentioned via on-line library searches and send
me the information, so that I can request the books by Inter-Library Loan.
You could also search for these books on the internet -- no doubt some
are already available. If you want to go one step further, download
the book, format in Microsoft word according to these guidelines, export in RTF format,
and mail the result to me for easy adding to the CCEL.
Provide links for the WWSB
If you know of a source of (high-quality, classic, stable) items that
should be linked into the World Wide Study Bible,
especially commentaries or sermons by well-known people,
create a database import file according to the specifications and mail it to me. I am
most interested in large collections of links, not single links;
also, they should be time-tested classics rather than new works that
you have written.
Author Biographies
Find a public domain reference source and prepare a biography of one
page or less of some of the authors on the list in HTML. If you find
more extensive biographical information from a trusted source that
you wish to include, link it from the 1-page biography. Some
suggested sources include an old edition of the Encyclopedia
Britannica, published before 1922, the @Catholic Encyclopedia,
or your local library.
Specific Needs
@Harry Plantinga
This document (last modified February 05, 1998) from the
Christian
Classics Electronic Library server, at
@Wheaton College