[WikiEN-l] Rating the English wikipedia

[Sam Blacketer]

On Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 8:56 PM, Andrew Gray <andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk>wrote:

>
> There is a project (even longer-running and slower-burning than the
> ODNB) to construct a reference work covering all MPs, at least as much
> as they're known, along with various other bits and pieces:
>
> http://www.histparl.ac.uk/about.html
>

Or try http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Parliament for some
explanation of its history.


> In the past sixty years, they've managed to cover a little over half
> the timeframe in twenty-eight (!) volumes. I have never seen their
> work, I admit, but I'd be intrigued to...
>

I have the CD-Rom containing the volumes published up to 1998 and 12 volumes
published since then are on a shelf just above the computer. They are very
interesting studies, delving very deep into manuscript sources and using as
their sources letters between various senior politicians preserved in the
archives. They concentrate only on the subjects' Parliamentary and political
activities, so for example the only mention of the diary of Samuel Pepys (MP
for Castle Rising 1673-79, Harwich 1679 and 1685-88) is that Pepys stopped
writing it before he became an MP.

-- 
Sam Blacketer