VirginiaHuguenot
Puritanboard Librarian
The following announcement is from the Encyclopedia Puritannica Project:
On March 8, 2006, a joint-project by Reformation Heritage Books (RHB), Solid Ground Christian Books (SGCB) and the EPP was announced and launched. The idea is to enable the Reformed Christian community to pick its own old books that need to be published in electronic / book form and then help shepherd those books through the development phases (and also readily monitor their progress!).
This Internet-based project has been named the Reformed Publishing Cooperatives, and it is initially being hosted by the EPP at http://www.puritannica.com/Cooperatives/ . This site is divided up into individual publishing cooperatives, where each cooperative represents either a historical classification, such as "Early Reformers" or "Early Puritans" or a large segment of the Reformed church, such as "Westminster Standards Churches" or "Reformed / Sovereign Grace Baptist Churches".
If users of this new site don't find a cooperative which they think ought to be there, then they are free to nominate a cooperative of their choosing.
Each cooperative consists of one or more book "campaigns." Each campaign represents a book that is on its way through the development phases. There are 15 phases (steps) in creating an electronic text from a book, and 5 further phases in getting a new book printed (based on the electronic text). Each campaign has a color-coded (Red-Yellow-Green) chart associated with it, so that the Cooperatives' site's users can readily monitor how far along a book is in its development campaign.
The site's users are free to nominate their own book for a campaign within one of the cooperatives. Once a book's nomination has been accepted by the site's sponsors, individual Christians, churches and organizations around the world can then join together in helping move the book through to its completion. The help needed to move a book along can come in a number of forms:
1) Prayer for God's blessing
2) Volunteer labor for activities such as proof-reading and scanning.
3) Contributions monetarily (tax-deductible for USA donors)
4) Loans or contributions of original material
5) Donations of existing electronic texts
The site's sponsors hope that by combining the efforts of thousands of individuals, hundreds of churches and many Christian organizations, associations and societies into a unified, efficient publishing concern, the Reformed Church will gain the ability to turn out high-fidelity, low-cost, older Reformed books in greater volume than it has been able to do heretofore.
The website is fully functional now. As a non-profit organization, RHB is ready to receive tax-deductible (USA only) donations via check, credit card or PayPal. The EPP will be administering all offers to provide volunteer assistance.
Special donation incentive programs are currently in place for three of the authors on the Cooperatives site. Donors will receive 1 EPP 3.0 CD for every $100.00 contributed to the book campaigns of these authors. They are:
1) William Perkins, "Works" (located in the Early Puritans Cooperative)
2) Thomas Manton, "Works" (also in the Puritans Cooperative)
3) Benjamin Keach, 2 vols. on the "Parables" and his work on the Bible's "Types and Metaphors" (Keach was a prominent author of the 1689 Baptist Confession; he´s in the Baptist Cooperative.)
Please consider visiting this new website and then doing all you can to help the sponsors spread the word and support the effort. Feel free to notify your church's members, officers, higher courts, and associations as well as Christian discussion boards, lists, chat-rooms and Christian email lists, etc. about this new effort.
Other Reformed Christian publishers are invited to consider becoming a site sponsor.
Individuals, churches and Christian organizations are also welcome to become formal sponsors of particular Cooperatives within the website.
Also feel free to note us back with any questions you might have and especially with any critique you might have of the site whether it be the conceptual or the grammatical or anything in between. In coming days, Lord willing, there should be some major news releases to the Christian community concerning the Reformed Publishing Cooperatives project, and we would like everything to be as useful and error-free as possible.
Thank you so much for your time and attention.
Sincerely yours in Christ,
Steve Mouring
Encyclopedia Puritannica Project
http://www.puritannica.com
mailto:[email protected]
