Polverone
Now celebrating 21 years of madness
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Sciencemadness grows a decent library
The much-neglected <A HREF="http://www.sciencemadness.org/library/">Sciencemadness library</A> has acquired a major new section.
There is now a <A HREF="http://www.sciencemadness.org/library/dlibooks.html">page</A> devoted to English-language scientific and
technical books acquired from the Digital Library of India.
I have already done the following:
-downloaded all high-resolution images for the books in question, using a Python script and some patience
-run automated median-filtering on the images to clean up speckling and make them compress better
-begun cleaning page images and converting to OCR'd PDF files
The most time-consuming part of all this is the hand-cleanup of dark page edges, speckles, and blotches in Photoshop. However, I have already
completed two books: The Practical Methods of Organic Chemistry and The Synthetic Use of Metals in Organic Chemistry. Go and grab
them now, and look forward to many more books being completed in the following months. If there are any volunteers to do hand-cleanup of images for
other books, it would be appreciated. Good short summaries or other comments for the "comments" column on that page would also be nice.
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vulture
Forum Gatekeeper
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Holy! Thumbs up! 
One shouldn't accept or resort to the mutilation of science to appease the mentally impaired.
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Mumbles
Hazard to Others
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Location: US
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Mood: Procrastinating
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We all love you Polverone
Finally, for some reason some of the books I wanted from the DLI wouldn't download for me. They kept timing out or something would always go
wrong. Very agrevating to have such a plethora of information just out of your finger tips. Sure I could of read off the site, but it is extremely
time consuming to change pages, and nearly impossible to search the document.
[Edited on 2-4-2004 by Mumbles]
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ech310n
Harmless
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Thankyou very much Polverone
I tried downloading some books myself which I would then convert to a PDF but as Mumbles said, the pages kept timing out 
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Polverone
Now celebrating 21 years of madness
Posts: 3186
Registered: 19-5-2002
Location: The Sunny Pacific Northwest
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Mood: Waiting for spring
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book added: Ozone
Ozone, by E.K. Rideal, 1920, 204 pages.
Like a number of other DLI books, this one appeared to be scanned relatively poorly (or perhaps the source book was in poor condition). The light,
noisy images on many pages make it hard for humans to read and virtually impossible for OCR to decipher. The compression ratio also suffered from the
noise, making the file considerably larger than those from other books of ~200 pages.
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Polverone
Now celebrating 21 years of madness
Posts: 3186
Registered: 19-5-2002
Location: The Sunny Pacific Northwest
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Mood: Waiting for spring
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book added: Vitamins
Vitamins by Ragnar Berg, 411 pages, is now available.
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Polverone
Now celebrating 21 years of madness
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Registered: 19-5-2002
Location: The Sunny Pacific Northwest
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Mood: Waiting for spring
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I'm still working at it!
Biochemical Catalysts in Life and Industry by Jean Effront, 1917, 753 pages, is now available. I have attended to other projects for quite
some time before finishing up this latest release. Let me remind my fellow mad scientists why these old books are so wonderful:
They are very concrete, and their practical observations are useful even if their theory is far behind the times. They do not rely on
unusual/expensive equipment or reagents. They contain information that is often glossed over in more accessible modern texts, since the modern texts
want to present modern theory, which displaces old theory and practical information of all sorts.
[Edited on 6-28-2004 by Polverone]
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Polverone
Now celebrating 21 years of madness
Posts: 3186
Registered: 19-5-2002
Location: The Sunny Pacific Northwest
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Mood: Waiting for spring
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It has been a while since I posted to this thread. I can't remember where else I may have been announcing books, or maybe I just haven't been
announcing them.
There are now 5 new books in the library. Thanks go to Chromium for posting the source PDFs that I processed to create these files. The books are
Autoclaves and High Pressure Work, The Electrochemistry of Organic Compounds, Formaldehyde, Fixation of Atmospheric
Nitrogen, and Organometallic Compounds.
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IrC
International Hazard
Posts: 2710
Registered: 7-3-2005
Location: Eureka
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http://www.sciencemadness.org/library/dlibooks.html
I get a "file not found" on this link.
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Polverone
Now celebrating 21 years of madness
Posts: 3186
Registered: 19-5-2002
Location: The Sunny Pacific Northwest
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Mood: Waiting for spring
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It started out with the main "Library" page consisting of member-submitted articles and article summaries, but the collection of scanned books quickly
eclipsed it. Eventually the dlibooks page was made the main index, with the small collection of shorter articles relegated to another page.
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IrC
International Hazard
Posts: 2710
Registered: 7-3-2005
Location: Eureka
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Ok. Also just FYI but I get a file not found for:
http://www.sciencemadness.org/library/electrochemistry_of_or...
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Polverone
Now celebrating 21 years of madness
Posts: 3186
Registered: 19-5-2002
Location: The Sunny Pacific Northwest
Member Is Offline
Mood: Waiting for spring
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Fixed.
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