Our latest Distributed Proofreaders project is an 1886 dime novel aimed at young readers, part of the Golden Library of Choice Reading for Boys and Girls: Under the Polar Star, by Dwight Weldon. Given that many of us are forced to spend extra time indoors right now, it may be just the right time to ignore the spring weather and instead work to help preserve this long-forgotten novel about polar exploration.

If you haven’t volunteered for proofreading support before, you can learn how it works in this earlier blog post: Proofreading the Digital Library. The process of volunteer-based cultural preservation adds a hint of friendly competition in the form of leaderboards and ranks based on the number of pages you help to proofread and format. Ultimately, all of the work done there adds to the huge collection of free eBooks at Project Gutenberg.

If you’re persuaded and want to give it a try, you can join in the fun at the project page. If you enjoy the process, please comment here and let us know — that will encourage us to prioritize the release of even more titles into the queues; we’ll even take requests if anything in our Digital Library strikes your fancy!