Magnus Manske wrote:
As we are short on medical topics, I went to [[Requested articles]] and created a stub on [[Ethmoid bone]]. Then I realized that there's [[Gray's Anatomy]] from 1908, in the public domain, according to the article.
So I copied the text and the images from www.bartleby.com, who claim to have the original thing. I didn't copy HTML but only the text, so no bartleby markup here.
Questions:
- Can we use these? AFAIK, scanning&OCR is not a copyrightable thing.
- Should we use these? Wikified, of course, as I did. They'd cover
plenty of topics in the medical area, but may be a little old and heavy. OTOH, this is wikipedia; if you don't like the style, edit!
I have no problem with your doing this. Unlike most of science, the basics of human anatomy have not significantly changed since Gray's book was produced. The illustration style is somewhat dated in the way that it uses shading, but I guess that will do until someone with the appropriate skills can improve them.
As a whole Gray's Anatomy could be a useful candidate for inclusion on Wikisource. It is an objective topic where NPOV issues are not going to be as big a factor as they might be elsewhere. As an English original, it does not lead to immediate translation problems, though if others want to translate it they should feel free to do so. It certainly provides a lot of work to do for those who want to wikify the text. It is a text which could easily fit potential annotation models and how they might be developed; that is to say it contains many individual sub-headings where people could find something to say or improve or compare or ...whatever? As a whole a good candidate for the experimental development of the relationship of wikisource with other members of the Wikimedia Kingdom.
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