Some of you know that I (LA2) am the founder of Project Runeberg,
a website (
runeberg.org) where we scan old books from Sweden,
Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Iceland, including several works
that are recycled for Wikipedia. In promoting the way we work, my
biggest obstacle is that the world at large is so unwilling to
learn Swedish. You don't know what you're missing!
So I found and bought "The New Student's Reference Work", a little
encyclopedia in five volumes, published in Chicago in 1914. As it
was published before 1923, it is now in the public domain. Since
this non-Scandinavian work doesn't fit in Project Runeberg, I put
it in Wikisource.
First I scanned images (300 dpi JPEG) of all 2791 pages and
uploaded them to Wikimedia Commons, where you will find them in
the category
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:LA2-NSRW
Then, for each book page, I created a wiki page on Wikisource
displaying the scanned image and containing the raw OCR text. If
you want to help in proofreading, use two separate browser windows
to open the enlarged image and edit the wiki text.
Finally, I made a front page with a short preface and a rough
table of contents, which is your starting point:
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_New_Student%27s_Reference_Work
Some trivia:
It turns out that this work has a historic relationship to
Encyclopædia Britannica. The main editor, Chandler B. Beach,
started out as a salesman for Britannica, but in 1892 set out to
create his own, smaller and more easily sold "Youth's Cyclopedia".
His companion F.E. Compton took over the firm in 1907 and later
produced "Compton's Encyclopedia". In 1941 this competitor was
acquired by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
Someone already noticed that the illustration plate for Peanuts,
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:LA2-NSRW-3-0473.jpg is
identical to the one found in Koehler's Medicinal-Plants 1887,
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Koeh-163.jpg
So reuse of encyclopedic materials is nothing new indeed.
--
Lars Aronsson (lars(a)aronsson.se)
Project Runeberg - free Nordic literature -
http://runeberg.org/
