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.)
Charles
2009/4/7 Charles Matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com:
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.)
As a quick note, it's a little more easily available than it used to be - if you have access to the current Oxford DNB, they've implemented a system whereby each article is discreetly linked to a copy of the "original" text. (I don't know how precise a copy, or if it's been at all edited or modified)
I don't know when this came into practice, but I only encountered it last month. Might prove handy for your transcription checking!
on 4/7/09 10:04 AM, Andrew Gray at andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk wrote:
2009/4/7 Charles Matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com:
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.)
As a quick note, it's a little more easily available than it used to be - if you have access to the current Oxford DNB, they've implemented a system whereby each article is discreetly linked to a copy of the "original" text. (I don't know how precise a copy, or if it's been at all edited or modified)
I don't know when this came into practice, but I only encountered it last month. Might prove handy for your transcription checking!
Charles,
Are you also aware of this?
http://www.oup.com/oxforddnb/info/freeodnb/
Your can register to receive a "Life of the Day". It's Great!
Marc Riddell
Andrew Gray wrote:
As a quick note, it's a little more easily available than it used to be - if you have access to the current Oxford DNB, they've implemented a system whereby each article is discreetly linked to a copy of the "original" text. (I don't know how precise a copy, or if it's been at all edited or modified)
I don't know when this came into practice, but I only encountered it last month. Might prove handy for your transcription checking!
It certainly might. I don't have current access to the ODNB, but this might be a reason to get it by a work-around I was recently told about.
Charles
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