In the 1980s, my father wrote a book that an analysis and annotation of another well-known book which is now in the public domain. My family owns the rights to this annotation (we checked with the press that put it out). I think it would make a really good eBook if someone wanted to scan it all in, digitize it, and turn all the annotations into hyperlinks. I know that theoretically I could do that all myself, but I feel like that’s something bigger than I can tackle alone. He was a scholar, so he did a huge amount of research on the book which is basically unavailable now to anyone who is interested in it.
So could anyone recommend a good service to do this? I don’t know that I could necessarily raise the funds to do it, but I think it would be worth a try with a kickstarter or something.
As someone who has dabbled in genealogy, even a simple phone scan can be appreciated by the right audience. I always preferred transcription and OCR of course, but that first jump from “not online” to “online” was always a huge relief.
That makes sense, but this is more about providing a scholarly work in an easy-to-access format, which would necessarily include a lot of hyperlinks since it was an annotation.
As far as just preserving it for family, we have multiple copies.
I’m just suggesting that, if it is a book, the people who might be interested in using it will be happy that it is at least available in its original state, and that the effort to cross-reference will be a bonus, not a critical feature.
If there are copies hiding in academic libraries, then fair play, no real need, but if there is literally nowhere else to get your dad’s book, I think the universe of people interested in a scholarly analysis of a novel would welcome whatever they can get and keep a copy of the novel open on their desk or in another window. The genealogy angle was more tangential to that. :-)