[Wikipedia-l] Gray's Anatomy

[Ray Saintonge]

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.

Ec