The problem of the new edition...

I've posted a few times about the idea of taking some books that have fallen into the public domain and trying to convert them to audiobook format for free distribution. Ventures such as Soli Deo Gloria Books and Banner of Truth have in recent years printed up copies of these books. That would be useful for converting to audiobook format, but the problem is that these copies in general appear not to be copies in the pure sense. Sometimes the works are abridged and sometimes the spelling and grammar is updated to fit modern conventions. That makes these books easier to read, but at the same time as these modifications have been introduced, these books by default are covered by copyright law (unless the book explicitly disclaims such).

Because of this, I've been looking at other ways of obtaining source materials. There are a few websites out there with source material, including CCEL, but I can't find a book that I think would work well as a starter for this project. This lead me to Google Books which is placing online scanned copies of some books that have fallen into the public domain. One of the problems with this is that the scanning is done by machine. While this allows for a high volume it can also lead to some problems. Consider pages 334 and 335 of a book by Thomas Brooks. I'm still busy exploring links off Reformation Ink