Gutenberg has very flexible usage terms so if they already have the works in question you can download the text, strip out the Gutenberg references and do with it what you will. Even page is nicely and make a PDF with it if you like. This will (if correctly paged [But you can get away with a nicely designed word version]) act as a rather nice ebook.

I am fairly sure that aside from the editing issue of scanning/ocr work you could do that for a few books if you wanted! We publish some public domain works and find the toughest part to be editing OCR scans, but such is life!
Eoin

Google Book Search does have the Harvard Library copy of the 1888 printing of “Lessons in the Mechanics of Personal Magnetism” up for free download.

Strangely enough, it is actually published under the name Webster Edgerly. In later years all his books would use the pseudonym Edmund Shaftesbury. That’s a pretty interesting historical footnote all its own.

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Addendum to the addendum.

Via Google Book Search, I have also found early editions of “The Cultivation of the Chest” (under the name Edmund Shaftesbury) and “The Ralston Brain Regime” (under the name Everett Ralston).

Additionally, I’ve found a block of 20 or so issues of the “The Metaphysical Magazine,” which may have some value to research.

All hail Google Book Search.

It’s only a pity they aren’t all up there.

Yes, it is probably best to just work through Gutenberg or Sacred Texts. I had hoped to ‘go it alone’ so as to have a particular face on the issue. After all, it’s tough to influence people to scan and include their own copies in the database if the database involved is something as large and impersonal as Gutenberg.

I was hoping to provoke a private collection of files all based around my specific research, then provide copies of them to one of the bigger sites as an extension.

But that may not be feasible.

I have thought of the OCR / Gutenberg method as an alternative, but with the word “revised” included, I’m simply not sure if I’m in the clear in either case.

I suppose just about all that I can logically do is compare the text to the older versions and see if it’s actually any different. In that case, however, I may as well simply scan the clearly public domain editions.

Oh well. Perhaps I can still do under-the-table file swapping with other owners… Too bad said owners are so difficult to find.

Damn Mickey Mouse extensions…ruining the great and good plans of mice and men. (Well, not mice, apparently…)

The workaround if the text itself is in the clear is to scan the text using OCR technology, edit it for accuracy etc. and publish a version of the text much like Project Gutenberg!

But yes sometimes the system is exceptionally confusing!
Eoin