.9% accurate. Software on the
website (which is still being tested) allows users to convert books in ASCII,
ISO-8859, Unicode and Big-5, for example, into other formats. Conversion will
eventually be possible into still more formats, including Braille and voice. So
there's no point arguing about which format is best. Text format can either be
used as is or to create others. Text-format books can also be easily used by
those who want to offer them in more sophisticated formats, without any
restriction except for respect for copyright laws in the country involved and
the availability of new free versions produced.

Some readers have asked about how volunteer proofreaders work. You go to the
Distributed Proofreaders Europe website that has just been put up (and is still
being tested) by Project Rastko (Belgrade) to handle the shared proofreading
done by Project Gutenberg Europe. Sign up and you'll then see detailed
instructions (which are still being translated in several languages). For
example, passages in bold, italic or underlined, like footnotes, are always
treated the same way, to standardize presentation of all the e-books. A
discussion forum allows you to ask questions or seek help at any time.

Each time you go to the website, you choose the book you want. Pages of the book
appear side by side in two forms - one the scanned image and the other the text
produced by OCR (optical character recognition) software. You compare the two
and make corrections. OCR is usually 99% accurate, which makes for about 10
corrections a page. You save each page you do and can then either stop work or
do another. All the books are proofread twice (the second time only by
experienced proofreaders) before the final version is ready for the public
(after which any further errors noted by readers are systematically corrected).

You don't have any quota to fulfill, but it's recommended you do a page a day if
possible. It doesn't seem much but with hundreds of volunteers it really adds
up. In 2003, on the original site of Distributed Proofreaders, about 250-300
people were working each day, producing a daily total of 2,500-3,000 pages, the
equivalent of two pages a minute.

Volunteers can also work independently, by digitizing a whole book in any
word-processing programme or else scan it in and convert it into text using OCR
software and then make corrections by comparing it with the original. In each
case, someone else will proofread it.