Preserving our Christian Heritage since 2001.
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Preserving our Christian Heritage since 2001.
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I have now been working on The DCL in some form or another for over six years now. It seems like time has flew by and I really don't have that much done. Taking a quick glance over the number of books I have scanned, I have brought over 120 books to the web, many of them for the first time. But then I look at my long term goals. I have not completed any of them yet. I have been chipping away at them however. This is a little discouraging, but at the same time I still have something to work towards. Since I will be having a seven year anniversary of the website in late November of 2007, I thought it might be best to write out where I am at and let my users know where I want to be.
After working in the Ministry, retail in a specially Christian bookstore, and dealing with people that use my website, I have found that Christians are some of the most demanding and least gracious people that there are. I am reminded of something Lewis said, about how many of us think we are patient, that is until we are inconvenienced. I have had people complain about the silliest of things on the website, that I did not have the author they liked, a link was broken, I did not have enough book to call the website a library, etc.
As I was reading back over what I just read, it bothered me my initial experience of the last six years would be one of fatigue. On the bright side, I have many visitors that have stayed with the website for a long time, eagerly awaiting each new book posted. I have one user from Italy who I would like to thank, as he has constantly emailed me from time to time to encourage me and thank me for a book he liked.
This thought follows my previous thought. Because it is so easy to download a book and then be on to the next website, it is hard to tell if people are using the site very much. I am averaging around 3,000 visitors a month at the moment, and it is growing steadily, but most of them never email me. So I do not know if they come to the site and then move on, or if they are constantly coming back to the site and using it again. The moral of the story being, if you use any websites on a regular basis, you should email the webmaster and tell them what you like about the website, and maybe any suggestions and long term user could give. They will appreciate it, and it will mean more that some numbers on a graph.
The books that receive the most traffic on my website are the Bibles. The Geneva Bible, the Emphatic Diaglott and the English Revised Version are the most popular, taking up a large chunk of the traffic. I suspect that if I ever can finish scanning off the 1611 King James facsimile that I have it will also hog a lot of the traffic. I am happy to see people interested in old Bibles, and as Billy Graham (allegedly) said when asked which was the best Bible, "Which ever one I can get you to read," I have the same sentiments. Of course, I do no want people reading heterodox translations for spiritual value, and I believe I can say neither does Mr. Graham, but they have their part in history too. That is why I have provided them. I only see it as a good thing when people are getting in touch with their Christian heritage.
I have had mixed feelings about this subject. The files I post are public domain files, and the whole reason I do so is so people can use them. But sometimes I think people go to far. For example, until I scanned off the English Revised Version, to my knowledge only small parts of it had ever been posted online. I keep track of several online forums that discusses Bible translations and Bible study software, so I had seen people ask many times for the ERV. I thought it was time for somebody to do something about the problem so I bought one and scanned it off. (Well, that is the simple version, I ended up buying two copies and getting two through Inter-Library loan because more often than not old books are very damaged and I have to hunt down missing pages). To my surprise, soon after I had posted my scanned copy, the ERV started to pop up on many different sites on the internet. Some of them were obviously the copy I had scanned. (i.e. What are the chances that there will be a mold spot or a page tear in exactly the same place?)
That almost made me want to stop scanning files. As an end user, many people are not aware of how many hours it takes to scan books. When I am no a role and I have a book that is in good condition, I can scan about fifty pages in half an hour. Then I take every page into a graphic editing program and make sure that all the text is on the page and erase any mars that I can. Add in the fact that old Bibles and books can be rather expensive and that is a lot of time and money invested.
Of course, I am merely that latest person riding on the crest of history of the Bible, and many more people have labored anonymously and not in vain, and for most of history with much less technology than I have in my small room, to give us all of the manuscripts and translations that we have this day. So in the grand scheme of things, no harm is done.
When I first stated scanning books, Project Guttenberg was the major provider of e-texts on the Internet. My two competitors as far as religious texts goes were the CCEL and Sacred-texts, (both very nice websites I might add). Six years later there are now hundreds of websites that have books, even Google and Microsoft are in the mix now.
So why do I bother to continue? For the same reason I started. If you have ever downloaded a PG e-text, you will notice that most of the books have not been converted to e-text very well. In the old days they stripped out page numbers, copyright dates, publisher information, etc. All very useful information to your average person who is not just hording e-books on their hard drive. Google and Microsoft are not better as it turns out, the do push a lot of new books out each month, but they have a lot of badly scanned pages, and sometimes you get some bodies hand instead of a page. While these larger sites may have a lot of volume, I try to focus on a specific area and make sure my scans are good before I post them.
When I first started scanning books back in college, I had a grand dream of having every English Bible translation on my website in no time. I was annoyed that so many Bible websites just had copies of other peoples work. (If you ever find an error in a transcribed text, like missing words, verses, etc. Do a search on the other Bible websites and you will probably find that error in their text, too. i.e. The ASV and the Latin Vulgate are plagued by this problem). I asked myself, "Why so many websites but so little new content?"
So I started scanning off the Geneva Bible. It took me so long to complete my scan that several other people started and finished about the same time I did. But it was finished, over a thousand large pages on the Internet for anyone to use. It was a great feeling, but it was mostly adding fuel to the fire, as I did not stop there.
Now six years later, I have seventeen Bibles on the site or on the CD-ROM and I have about 10 more in the stack. Once again, most of these are unique Bibles that have not been posted of the Internet before. But I have found out why most websites just copy other peoples work. It is very expensive. Last weekend, I put down about $120 to get some old New Testaments. How many books did I get? Only two. They were not even that old of books, one from 1922 and the other from 1904 or so. One of them I have not been able to find on inter-library loan so I was happy it came up for sale. So how do I do this?
I used to feel guilty about charging money for the CD-ROM's. I used to have a view of ministry that was rather unrealistic. I thought that the book should just turn up in front of me for no cost and that would be that. The Lord works in mysterious ways and such. But as I started reading some of these books I was scanning, I learned about something the previous generations of Christians had called vocation. Vocation means, in a nutshell, doing what God called you to do. Vocation means that everybody is in ministry, even if they are not in a formal ministry position in the Church. The construction worker, the politician, and the university professor, when they do their jobs as God would have it, and as Lewis puts it, "wash their hands of the whole day and commit it to posterity," are doing the work of God as much as the minister who preaches from the pulpit. All work is God's work. We must never make a distinction between the sacred and the secular in the Kingdom of God, because it all belongs to him and we are stewards doing the job.
Once I learned this I was able to view the sales of the CD-ROM as a way of furthering the website. I asked myself, how many people know how to scan books and are able to take the time to do it? How many people have the drive and energy to do it for this long? How many people love books enough to hunt down old copies that probably have not been opened in decades? God has given me this mixture of talents and interests to those who do not have the time or the know how can have this information in a simple file that they can download or get on a CD-ROM. Now that is using technology to further educate the Kingdom.
Some people have wondering why I have posted rather non-Christian books before. My answer is simple, I am posting those books because our society is being moved by the ideas contained in those books. As Christians we must be able to answer these ideas, and we must be able to offer a better Christian solution. I am scanning off the works of Herbert Spencer in some spare time (do not expect it soon, there are many volumes). Some of you may know him as the man who coined the phrase, "Survival of the fittest." Was he a Christian, no. Is there any good or truth in his writings? I do see some as I have been looking through it. There is a lot more evil and self destructive lies though. So why bother scanning and posting it? Because he is an influential think who's ideas have trickled down into modern thought, and as the Reformers said, "To the source," we might as well go to the source also. If we can expose the evil in the source, then we can more easily answer the evil and expose it for what it is in the popular mind. My question is, if we who know the truth do not do it, who do we expect to?
So this is where I am at. My goals for the website have expanded over the years, but unfortunately my time and resources have grown smaller. But I do not see this as a problem. Either I will be able to finish these goals as the Lord provides, or I will pass the website onto some one who has the resources. But I am still kicking and scanning off books, albeit slower than before. I hope to have some new Bibles scanned off soon and up on the website. Prayers are appreciated.
