Distributed Proofreaders Canada
Distributed Proofreaders Canada (DP Canada) is a volunteer organization that transfers books into electronic format and releases them as public domain books in formats readable by electronic devices. It was launched in December 2007 and as of 2023 has published about 8,000 books. Books that are released are stored on a book archive called Faded Page. While its focus is on Canadian publications and preserving Canadiana, it also includes books from other countries as well. It is modelled after Distributed Proofreaders, and performs the same function as similar projects in other parts of the world such as Project Gutenberg in the United States and Project Gutenberg Australia.
Available in
English, French
No
Required
December 1, 2007
Active
History[edit]
Distributed Proofreaders Canada was launched in December 2007 by David Jones and Michael Shepard. Although it was established by members of the original Distributed Proofreaders site, it is a separate entity.[2] It is a volunteer-based, non-profit organization. All the administrative and management costs are borne by its members. The software used by DP Canada was originally downloaded from SourceForge but has been substantially modified since then.
In addition to preserving Canadiana, DP Canada is notable because it is one of the first major efforts to take advantage of Canada's copyright laws which allows more works to be preserved. Unlike copyright law in other countries, Canada had until 2022 a "life plus 50" copyright term. Works by authors who died before 1972 became part of the public domain. Starting in 2023, this was changed to life plus 70. Therefore works by authors who died in 1972 won't become public domain until 2043.[3][4] Other countries have differing copyright laws. Although files available through DP Canada are publicly available in other countries, the onus is on the reader to ensure that they only download material that is not in copyright in their country of residence.
Notable Canadian authors whose books have been published include Stephen Leacock, L. M. Montgomery, E. T. Seton and Mazo de la Roche. Authors whose works have been released in Canada but not other parts of the world include A. A. Milne, C. S. Lewis, Winston Churchill, E. E. Smith, Amy Carmichael, and Albert Camus.
Publication[edit]
The books that are published by DP Canada in the public domain are made available through the Faded Page book archive. Some of the publications released are also posted to the Project Gutenberg Canada (PG Canada) website. PG Canada is a book archive that does not perform proofreading tasks.