Wikisource:Maintenance of the Month/Creating a YouTube video about Wikisource

Script

 * The script is below. Post any remark about it under the relevant piece.

Why should I bother with Wikisource?
Wikisource volunteers contribute in many ways and all are volunteers. Their reasons for being on Wikisource vary from person to person but it comes down to the fact that they volunteer solely because they want to be involved and perhaps because it is, and will remain, something greater than any individual. The projects of volunteers are often independent because not everyone likes the same topics. Still, some gather together and help each other. These volunteers, often called editors, and administrators, know they are all helping to build a most reliable collection of free and informative library texts that the world has ever known. Prior to this was the great library of Alexandria that was easily destroyed. Wikisource is not so much unlike the library at Alexandria except it is not so easily destroyed. Books are saved from here to many formats or just read here. Many get printed out thereby using one old and often frail and discolored book to create thousands or millions of new originals. Therefore these forms of education and adventures of a long ago past will endure, amuse, and teach generations of the future. This also true of the editors here today. They do what they do because it is worth doing and because they like what they do. —Maury (talk) 23:30, 1 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Good! I integrated this with Londonjackbooks' reasons (below) and put it in the grey box.--Erasmo Barresi (talk) 16:38, 2 February 2013 (UTC)


 * If I should find I like Wikisource then what can I do to promote Wikisource aside from editing?


 * One idea is to make a small or larger videos. For example,using a portion of a recently completed book on Cycles by the Wikisource Community, entitled The Cycle Industry housed on Wikisource and showing the url (link) to connect to the book immediately, we may find:

WikiSource Free Books- Cycles - YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swKYSXoDl7I&feature=youtu.be

William Morris

Published on Feb 1, 2013

WikiSource Library. This is an old book placed on WikiSource and available to anyone for free.. The text and images come from pages that are copied from original book scans. In one area these are shown as individual scans with new text or images copied beside the old book scanned. In another area you can read these new free books. Some are illustrated and some are not illustrated. This video is a 1st attempt to explain some of WikiSource. The main page will show 1st and the link will show last. This particular old book that has been saved is about "Cycles" - all kinds of old riding cycles of long ago. Unlike some free book sites WikiSource shows the old pages beside the copied new pages.

WikiSource English version: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Cycle_Industry

Category: Education

License: Standard YouTube License

—Maury (talk) 01:41, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

More on Why Wikisource
(not merely why contribute, but also why use/visit, etc.) Londonjackbooks (talk) 02:31, 2 February 2013 (UTC)
 * searchability of text
 * [not perfect but] more accurate transcription (with indexed sources) [similar to "reliable" as used above in quotation box; but maybe explain more about what makes the content more reliable—accuracy is only one aspect]
 * more aesthetically pleasing

A keyword for Wikisource is Trust. This trust I refer to comes from the process of placing the original book pages in a scan format. Then the editing is done beside the book page scan. When this is done it is easily seen that the transcribed text is the same as the scanned image. Therein is "truth" of the work done, an accuracy like no other on Internet. There they remain, side by side, the scanned image page and the transcribed text. The same holds true for images. Nothing can be hidden so there is trust in accuracy of the original book compared to the transcribed book. These scans are linked to the transcriptions of the originals located in another area. There is no getting around the validity of the transcribed works. This is totally different from books on Internet that do not use this same method for creating and printing new books from original old books often dating far into the past. There are all kinds of books here. There are books on just about everything and Wikisource is still growing. Wikisource library is yet young and will continue to grow into the future. E-Book readers cannot do this matching of a scanned original to a transcribed book of text and images. People who buy those publications have to assume other areas on Internet have accurate transcriptions. They have to pay and trust the accuracy of other e-books and webpages. People have to take for granted that what they buy and read are accurate. But there is no necessity, or hope, that the transcriptions in Wikisource's library is accurate because they can see for themselves simply by looking at the original scanned book pages. The volunteers here, called editors, are here, in part, because they love books and probably always have. Many of them grew up loving books of places, adventures, knowledge, &c. Because of this attitude the editors here have no desire nor reason to alter original scanned books—page-by-page—they do what they do out of a love for books themselves and a desire to share Wikisource's old books and other materials such as the Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation or Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence with the rest of the world. In this manner the entire world is becoming more and more united. Another point to be addressed is that this particular area on Internet, en.Wikisource is only one of many areas of Wikisource. There are many nations with "foreign" languages that also have areas on Wikisource just as Wikipedia does. en.ws is english Wikisource, it.ws is Italian Wikisource, es.Wikisource is Spanish Wikisoure. There are [ number ?] Wikisource areas from around the world and we all have the same goals in sharing Arts, Biography, Geography, History, Mathematics, Sciences, Society, Technology, Portals, and that is still not all because Wikisource continues to grow in all of these and other areas and yet it is all done by volunteer editors from nations from all around the world and still all of this is free to people of all nations that have Internet access to these many works. Still, all of this is only the tip of an iceberg

—Maury (talk) 17:49, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

Announcers

 * If you'd like to be an announcer in the video, sign your name below. By doing this, you agree to release any video or audio recording for the video under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike 3.0 license. The portion of video for each announcer depends on the number of announcers.