Sciencemadness Discussion Board
Not logged in [Login ]
Go To Bottom

Printable Version  
Author: Subject: Has anyone tried digitising old textbooks into a modern format?
fusso
International Hazard
*****




Posts: 1922
Registered: 23-6-2017
Location: 4 ∥ universes ahead of you
Member Is Offline


[*] posted on 25-11-2019 at 10:14
Has anyone tried digitising old textbooks into a modern format?


"Old textbooks" refer to textbooks that were published before word processors were invented. They look yellow, have uneven background colour and used antique fonts. Some of these books were scanned and text was extracted into a copiable format. But I've never seen any such books converted into more modern format, ie the background colour looks as new as if they were edited by word processors, use modern fonts, such that someone would thought that they were published in this digital era. Do these modernised textbooks exist, or has anyone on earth ever attempted this?



View user's profile View All Posts By User
andy1988
Hazard to Others
***




Posts: 135
Registered: 11-2-2018
Location: NW Americus ([i]in re[/i] Amerigo Vespucci)
Member Is Offline

Mood: No Mood

[*] posted on 25-11-2019 at 11:01


Yep, see the Internet Archive. You will find many books with expired copyright there, those are in the public domain. You can download in various formats, including optical character recognition (OCR) data/formats; the text is searchable and selectable via computer interface.

A business model of some publishers is to take those free public domain books and sell them via outlets like Amazon/ebay... for $10 or whatever as an ebook or print copy. With minor modifications like a page long professional introduction about their outstanding historical book publication company. Chances are if you Google search on for a book in the public domain you'll be presented with these store page listings and not see a result for the free Internet Archive (Google has an incentive I expect...). I suggest searching the Internet Archive for the old book before you search Google for this reason.

[Edited on 26-11-2019 by andy1988]




View user's profile View All Posts By User

  Go To Top