Appeal for Help with Sibley Project

[icactus]

So we've got a couple more people helping with the uploading but we could really use a few more.

The more people we have to help hack away at the link list the faster we can finish this and get caught up to the present at which point there would be more than enough people to easily take care of the daily uploads as they come in.

Thank you to those who have been joining in!

[coulonnus]

I often find a PD-US-only composer, arranger, lyricist, translator or illustrator. Could there be some automatic procedure to mark all scores involving this author or co-author as PD-US-only in the link list , each time I find this situation, please? This would improve the productivity of the participants of this project.

[icactus]

I have a script that I have used that walks through every sibley link to check for any non-pd people listed under the "contributor" section. But that only takes care of the people if they are listed under the "contributor" section. For the random people that are mentioned in other places (for example: http://hdl.handle.net/1802/15658), or only on the score itself, I can't think of any way to search for those people or other files with them mentioned other than manually searching for their name on the urresearch.edu site using google. I'm afraid those are the types we'll have to always do manually but it certainly seems like there aren't really that many of them.

[Carolus]

That's a very good example of the problem one encounters with some Sibley items. They give the arranger's dates but the person responsible for the English text, Alma Strettell, has no date info. Since most copyright terms - including all-important Canada's - revolve around the death date of the last surviving contributor, we can end up potentially burned in cases like this. Keep in mind that the item referenced was published 100 years ago. If Alma Strettell was only 20 years old when the item was published, she would have been 69 in 1961 (the latest year of death allowed for Canada at present). For items published more than 125 years ago, the odds of a contributor having lived long enough to be under copyright in Canada decrease considerably. However, there are always characters like Henri Büsser (1872-1973) who pop up from time to time!

[coulonnus]

After I found a score with Alma Strettell I made a Sibley search of scores with her and I marked their links as PD-US-only so the other participants don't loose time with these links.

In addition to these PD-US-only restriction this project has also become less rewarding after link #14000 because of the many definitely-off-topic, other-than-score documents I think the "to-do-est" scores are, in addition to their PD-ness, those where the composer page is already present on imslp. How can I search a composer on the Sibley catalog, limiting the results to the to-do category?

[icactus]

I suppose you could create a list of all the composer names we have on IMSLP and then have a script go through each sibley link and run it against the entire list for a match. The problem is still the arranger and editor issue when they are not listed in the contributor section.

As for the off-topic/other than score documents, I had not run my filter on the 14,000-16,000 links until just a few days ago so there shouldn't be many off-topic files unless Sibley uploaded them by mistake under the "musical scores" category. I also haven't bothered to run the filter on the links from 20,000 onward, though I suppose I could re-write the updating script to also run the filter at the same time...

EDIT: I just went back and fixed an error in my filter-script for unknown composer dates. There were a lot I was missing and I'm filtering them out now so that should help shrink the list by a few hundred

EDIT2: I see what you mean about all the "books" after 14000. I can filter those since they're listed as "primary item type: book." I wonder how many that will delete...

[coulonnus]

Some Sibley uploads were made in "ancient" times, i.e. before your first Sibley Projects appeals. These scores 1: do not have the correct |Scanner={{SibleyScan|1802/12345}} field 2: have their link still present in the Link List.
I have already corrected both problems "manually" with some scores I found in the list, and I would be happy to concentrate on this category of scores because I think they are the most urgent in this list and are quick to do.
But I can't seem to find the right Google search to obtain a selection of these scores on imslp, because Google doesn't "see" what you see when you edit a work page: a search with 'sibleyscan' gives no relevant results. A search with 'sibley' give these scores and the "correctly" uploaded Sibley scores.
Any ideas?

[icactus]

Don't bother. I did those for a while but decided it wasn't important because we actually don't care so much about having them labeled as it is important that the files are uploaded. It's just not an effective use of time to re-label them with sibleyscan|1802/xxxx.

[icactus]

As we get closer to the official start of summer if there are posters who find themselves with a little more free time I'd like to beg you to join us on finishing up the Sibley Project to get caught up to the present. We've had a ton of help from a few more people but we'd love more people to help carry the load!

I honestly didn't think we'd ever get to the point where all the Sibley Links were either cataloged or uploaded but we're getting close.

What started around 15,000 files is now down to about 2,000 left. Help us end the pledge drive!

[Carolus]

Before we get ahead of ourselves here, I would like to point out that the WIMA project is still under way. Yesterday, for example, we had nearly 800 files added - most of them from WIMA. One of the newer Sibley contributors added several works of a composer who died in 1968, which had to be deleted as they remain under copyright in Canada. What is most needed right now are folks who know something about work page hierarchy, the difference between an edition and an arrangement, etc. We were nearing 100,000 files just a year ago and now we stand at more than 203,000. Hopefully, the WIMA transfer will be wrapping up in the near term. After that is done, by all means go full speed on Sibley, which fell behind as a result of the great volume of WIMA additions.

[icactus]

Before we get ahead of ourselves here, I would like to point out that the WIMA project is still under way.

Hey! Go start your own appeal post! Everyone, please, pay no attention to the Carolus behind the curtain...

[Afp0815]

On the 16.000-18.999 list page all files, which are PD in Europe are now uploaded, all collections, books and non-PDs are identified, what's left needs to be uploaded by someone outside Europe

[icactus]

On the 16.000-18.999 list page all files, which are PD in Europe are now uploaded, all collections, books and non-PDs are identified, what's left needs to be uploaded by someone outside Europe

You can actually do all those files because you are not actually uploading them from Europe. You are just filling in blanks on a form and the IMSLP server is doing the actual uploading directly. So it doesn't matter where you are in the world - you can do all the Sibley files.

[pjones235]

I haven't done much with this project in a while, but I'm going to start doing a lot more to help. In helping, I'm unfortunately struggling. This may be a stupid question, but how can I easily find Sibley links to works that haven't been mirrored? Every time I try to mirror a link from the list, I check IMSLP to see if there's already such a work, and there typically is one that somebody already mirrored. What's the problem with this? How can I find the links of un-mirrored links?

[coulonnus]

Every time I try to mirror a link from the list, I check IMSLP to see if there's already such a work, and there typically is one that somebody already mirrored.

But did you delete the link in this List afterwards? I don't "see" you in the History of this list. You could prevent other Project Members from loosing time as you did.