Evolution in Proofreading: Distributed Proofreaders
From 2002-2004 an important innovation was developed, in support of the creation of new Project Gutenberg eBooks. This was Distributed Proofreaders, an early example of what is now known as crowdsourcing. Through Distributed Proofreaders, volunteers engage in a portion of the eBook creation process — whether it is copyright clearances, proofreading (a page at a time!), or formatting, checking, and finalization before uploading. Those portions, when coordinated together, lead to the creation of new eBooks from printed sources.