Help Wanted

If you decide that having the most important public domain Christian Classic books on the Internet is a goal you are willing to contribute some of your time toward, here are some volunteer tasks you might be able to take on.

Unfortunately, during the semester I don't have much time for training or supervision of volunteers, so you will have to select your own project and be self-motivated and able to figure out what needs to be done from the brief descriptions here.

Type Jonathan Edwards

Jonathan Edwards is commonly considered America's best theologian and philosopher. His works are spiritually rich as well as theologically acute. I would like to get all of Jonathan Edwards' Works on line. I have scanned the two volume Works, and gif images of the pages are available on line. You could type a section of this book and send it to me. More information on the @Edwards Project is available.

Lightfoot's Commentaries

This is a project being organized by @Bruce Lambert. Contact him for more information. He is also working on Bengel's Gnomon.

Spell-check, format, and proofread a book

A couple of books have been scanned and await volunteers to spell-check, format, and proofread.

In some cases, only scan files (.gif) are available. You would load each page into your web browser and type it into another window. Then format it as described below.

In other cases, RTF and PDF versions are available. You would download the RTF file (or a section of it) and load it into your word processor. Then spell-check, referring to the corresponding PDF file when necessary to see what a word should be. Print the book out, proofread it (circling any suspect words), and correct the word with reference to the gif or PDF file.

Congratulations! At this point you've done most of the work, and you can send your book to the CCEL where it will reach thousands of people. However, some CCEL-specific formatting still remains to be done. If you are willing to do some additional formatting, to prepare your book for the CCEL, see the guidelines for the Theological Markup Language. I suggest you start with the simplest guidelines and work your way up with later projects.

PDF files are read with Adobe Acrobat. You may already have it installed -- try double-clicking on the PDF file. If not, you can get it free from @Adobe. In instances where referring to the PDF file leaves you with remaining questions, you may wish to refer to the raw scan file for each page, usually a large gif or tif image -- or ask me.

Books waiting to be processed

Arndt, @True Christianity -- Cheryl Rice working on this, 1009.10.22
St. Therese of Lisieux -- @Life Status: Being typed by Jon Hewitt 11/27/98. See also @Little Flowers, @Life
St. Therese of Lisieux -- @Poems -- in progress by Dave Dermody 2/24/98
St. Benedict -- @Rule and Life Status: being typed by Deb Mueller , 12/16/98.
Boethius' @Consolation of Philosophy -- being worked on by Damon L. Coffey , 1998-08-18
Boethius' @Tracts -- being worked on by Lynda Jewett <1john33@pcola.gulf.net>, 2/10/98
Bede's @Ecclesiastical History. Note that a couple of sections of this work are available on the internet -- it would be worth finding and using them. (Anthony Thomas is working on this one--8/28/98).
Augustine Baker's Holy Wisdom, scanned by John Gross (Brandon Ray is working on this).
Irenaeus' The Apostolic Preaching -- a summary of what the apostles taught, one generation (!) after the fact. This one has some Greek that needs to be handled. Being worked on by "Daryl L. Biberdorf" , 1999-02-15.
F.B. Meyer's Our Daily Homily: Volume I: Genesis - Ruth -- Bruce Lambert (b.lambert@juno.com) working on this
Schaff's History of the Christian Church. This important 8-volume set needs formatting in ThML.

Proofread a book

Download and print out a book or part of a book. Circle in blue anything that looks as though it may be a typo. Mail the resulting printout to

Find and photocopy books

Do you have access to a theological library? You could find books on the CCEL wanted list, in public domain editions, photocopy them, and mail them to me. I could then mail them to other volunteers. I could reimburse you for the cost of photocopying and postage. This is a major bottleneck right now.

Volunteer coordinator

Do you enjoy talking with others via email? Perhaps you would be interested in being a volunteer coordinator. I send you a list of names of volunteers, and you offer "jobs" as they become available -- photocopying books, typing or scanning, proofreading, and formatting. You contact volunteers occasionally to see how things are going, and mail finished books to me.

Author Biographies

Find a public domain reference source and prepare a biography of one page or less of some of the authors on the list in HTML. If you find more extensive biographical information from a trusted source that you wish to include, link it from the 1-page biography. Some suggested sources include an old edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, published before 1922, the @Catholic Encyclopedia, or your local library.

Other Specific Needs

Proofread Henry Drummond's "The Greatest Thing in the World"
Finish formatting and proofread the 1916 @Episcopal Hymnal (RTF format). Open it in Microsoft Word, apply paragraph styles according to the guidelines, proofread, and send me the result. This may take many hours. In Progress -- Stephen Hutcheson

@Harry Plantinga

This document (last modified February 24, 1999) from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library server, at @Wheaton College