Jan 08, 2024 13:00:00

What are the characteristics of the open source project ``Standard Ebooks'' that turns public domain works into high-quality e-books?

The open source project ``

Standard Ebooks '' is a volunteer-led, non-profit effort to convert public domain books into e-books with quality comparable to or better than commercially available e-books. Standard Ebooks does not aim to preserve classics as e-books, but rather ``converts them into e-books with the general reader in mind and strives to improve readability.'' I tried reading it using an EPUB reader to find out what specific features it has.

Standard Ebooks: Free and liberated ebooks, carefully produced for the true book lover.
https://standardebooks.org/

The following article summarizes what kinds of books are actually published on Standard Ebooks and how to read e-books published on Standard Ebooks.

Overseas version of Aozora Bunko ``Standard Ebooks'' where you can read classic masterpieces from Holmes to Aristotle for free - GIGAZINE

A feature of Standard Ebooks is that in addition to information such as the title and genre, the book details page also includes information such as the number of words in the book, the estimated time it will take to read, and the ``difficulty of the book'' based on our own evaluation. . The higher the difficulty level of a book, the easier it is to read; at the time of writing, the poetry collection North of Boston was rated the easiest to read, at 93.34, and the philosophy book Yukan . ``Class Theory '' was the most difficult with a score of ``28.91''.

The image below is a page of Agatha Christie's `` The Secret of the Blue Train '' published in 1928, and the copyright protection period expires at the end of 2023, and it is a work that just entered the public domain in January 2024. The work page states that the work contains 71,121 words, that it takes approximately 4 hours and 19 minutes to read, and that the difficulty level of the book is ``77.23'' and that it is an ``easy to read work.'' I understand this. It is also indicated that it is the 6th work in the 'Poirot' series.

Standard Ebooks are characterized by not only making books in the public domain readable by simply copying them, but also by updating the typography and book binding from the original format to the modern format, making it easier to read. I place great importance on it. For example, by editing according to the strict

manual established by Standard Ebooks, such as using a modern style for quotations and unifying the use of full-width dashes and half-width dashes, the quality of the book is comparable to that of modern commercial e-books. It seems like they are making something of it.

Additionally, public domain books are scanned from paper books, which often results in misspellings, missing symbols, and punctuation. Before adding a new book to Standard Ebooks, we carefully read the entire book, compare it with the original book, and correct typos.

Furthermore, books downloaded from Standard Ebooks utilize the latest technology so that you can use various functions on your e-book reader.

In the image below, I opened a book downloaded from Standard Ebooks with the free EPUB reader ' Librum ' and used the table of contents function. A detailed table of contents for each chapter is displayed, and you can jump to the beginning of the chapter by clicking on the table of contents.

Also, below is an image of Bertrand Russell's ``

The Road to Freedom '' opened in Librum, and ``The Road to Freedom'' includes footnotes in the text. Click on footnote.

You can read the footnotes by going to the end of the book. Click the arrow button at the end of each footnote to return to the original page.

Below is the colophon page at the end of the book. The colophon is uniquely created and a link is also embedded in the author's name. Click on the author's name in the colophon.

The author's Wikipedia page opens in your browser. In addition, various attempts are being made to improve the reading experience, such as creating a beautiful binding by selecting a cover from a public domain artwork, or increasing the quality of the images included in the book.

In this way, Standard Ebooks is not just an open source e-book project, but is based on consistent ancient standards, with the general reader in mind, and by making the most of modern e-book technology. This project is being carried out with the concept of 'creating an e-book with good content and quality.' The purpose of Standard Ebooks is summarized in the article below.

What is the purpose of 'Standard Ebooks', a project to convert various classic works into e-books for free and in high quality? -GIGAZINE

Since Standard Ebooks is an open source project, if you encounter any errors or problems with the e-books or the site, we actively ask you to contact us using the report form . The details of Standard Ebooks are also published on GitHub, and the developer says that they are aiming for further improvements.