[WikiEN-l] 1911EB bites back - and DNB

[Ray Saintonge]

Charles Matthews wrote:
> I ought to be used to this by now; but I have just found a 1911 
> Britannica article we have not imported or covered (see [[William 
> Stewart of Houston]]). These almost always crop up when the 
> disambiguation of common names, such as "William Stewart", was not 
> exhaustive in the checking.
>
> Anyway, this might be a moment to mention ongoing work with another 
> merge, that of the old Dictionary of National Biography (DNB). I have 
> just reached the half-way point in doing a complete listing (with 
> summaries); see on [[User:Charles Matthews]]. The "raw material" for 
> that is in Magnus Manske's user space; I wouldn't mind help at all, but 
> the various types of corruption of scanned text make it a bit daunting 
> even with the "Concise Dictionary of National Biography" (CDNB) to hand. 
> In effect the 63 pages I'm producing are the content of the CDNB 
> summaries, restricted to the first edition (1900 and before) of the DNB. 
> Do ask if this seems of interest as a project.
>
> It will all be moved into project space when it's looking more complete. 
> There is an ambitious Wikisource project to get the original DNB 
> articles posted: unlike the 1911EB, and some others we use, this work is 
> _not_ yet conveniently available online.  (And it is a huge resource.)
>
>   
Speaking as a participant in the Wikisource project, I do make use of 
the Internet Archive version as a starting place, and proofread based on 
a hard copy in an OUP reprint.  There are differences between the two, 
for which I have tried to account.  Many of these take into account the 
1906 volume of errata, others take into account new information, and 
still others rewrite an article as a consequence of the previous two to 
provide space to avoid having changes spill onto another page.  Since 
the reprint combined each three volumes into one there was significant 
rewrite where the first and second, and second and third volumes of a 
group came together so as to present an appearance of seamless continuity.

The 1911 Britannica is only one stopping place in that spectrum.  I very 
much support the more ambitious notion that we should host all allowable 
editions of the EB, up to and including the early 14th editions, whose 
copyright was never renewed.  I have looked at early and late 14th 
editions, and have noted considerable differences between the versions. 
Many entire biographical articles that were originally included were 
excised from later printings. One might draw interesting inferences from 
such facts. When is a reprint really a new edition?

Ec