Updated copies of vintage books

[Amy Jo]

The recent talk about vintage books has left me wondering: is there an interest in hard-copy, retyped books? I have several I would love to use, and one of them I am planning to retype anyway. (My plan was to retype the book, and make a separate workbook for my DS.)

 

Any thoughts? What components are the most valuable (or essential) for vintage books? Teacher's notes/guides? An easy-to-use consumable workbook?

 

I am picturing something similar to Yesterday's Classics, but with lightly-updated textbooks such as Maxwell's grammar, H.C. Nutting's Latin, etc.

 

Thanks!

Amy

[nansk]

I am not sure about re-typed, but some months ago, there was a thread about some company that reprints these old books for about $8 each. I will try to search and post back.

[stripe]

The existence of the Espresso book machine coupled with the internet age has meant that companies and libraries are reprinting some of these old volumes that have gone out of copyright. You can see an article about this in the Wall Street Journal.

 

Here are where these machines are located (around the world):

http://www.ondemandbooks.com/our_ebm_locations.htm

 

I am not sure there is a huge market for retyped old books, honestly, but if you have something YOU love, then it would be worth it.

[Amy Jo]

Thank you both. I have seen some of the scanned/OCR'd copies, and they leave much to be desired. It seems homeschoolers today need a little more open & go with some books, and more teaching notes for others. I was wanting to slightly update the text, add teaching notes / ideas, scheduling ideas, etc. I'd also like to make workbooks to go with them, which should make it more open & go.

 

I think there is a lot of value in old books, but even I, the planning-addict, get tired of scanning the preface and then counting how many lessons in the book. I'd love to put some life in old books, and make an option that is low-cost, especially for families with multiple children.

 

I'm working on Nutting's Latin book now, I plan to use it for my kids anyway, and I wanted to format it nicely. I thought I'd use that book to test the waters!

 

Thanks for the feedback! Any more?

Amy

[stripe]

I think it's a great idea, if only for yourself.

 

I definitely wouldn't use an OCR'ed item, and some of the scans definitely are a mess. I've emailed Google Books to complain about illegible pages -- one book had tons of someone's fingers on them! But many of them are pretty nice. There are other websites with digital copies of old books that may have higher quality scans.

[nansk]

... It seems homeschoolers today need a little more open & go with some books, and more teaching notes for others. I was wanting to slightly update the text, add teaching notes / ideas, scheduling ideas, etc. I'd also like to make workbooks to go with them, which should make it more open & go...

 

Oh! I think I misunderstood your op. :tongue_smilie:

 

For people that already use vintage books, an updated version with teaching notes, lesson plans/schedule and a workbook format in a popular font (Italics, HWoT, ZB etc) would be very useful.

 

I use a few vintage LA books and I know that if they were available as ebooks with the copywork in Getty-Dubay Italics and more space for a younger child to write in, I would definitely buy them.

 

For the book to become more popular though, it needs to be reviewed favourably by a well-respected homeschool guide (like Serl's PLL was recommended in the first edition of WTM).

 

HTH