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Britannica11.org – a structured edition of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica

britannica11.org

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Re: Britannica11.org – a structured edition of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica

#131

Post by ahaspel »

zozbot234 wrote: post #130
ahaspel wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Reader's Guide has been added to the ancillary material. Thanks for the excellent suggestion.

Thanks for adding this! Do you plan to add back-links in the article pages (and perhaps in contributors pages) pointing to the chapters in the Reader's Guide that mention them, similar to what's done for the subject-based index?

Not a bad idea. I'll see what I can work out on that score. But I imagine the far more common path is from the Guide to the encyclopedia than the reverse.

Re: Britannica11.org – a structured edition of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica

#132

Post by ahaspel »

hallole wrote: post #41
ahaspel wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! The underlying text (1911 edition) is public domain, but the structured version here — the parsing, reconstruction, and linking — is something I put together for this site. Right now there isn’t a bulk download available. I’m considering exposing structured access (API or dataset) in some form, but haven’t decided exactly how that will work yet. If you have a specific use case in mind (especially for training…

I've wanted to do something like this for The Encyclopédie, a hugely relevant text to the Enlightenment. If you ever get around to adding a rough "How I (generally) Made This" section, that'd be appreciated! Site looks great :)

Thanks for the kind words. I've had a few requests for a technical appendix (i.e., "how I built this") and it is in the works.

Re: Britannica11.org – a structured edition of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica

#133

Post by ahaspel »

bentley wrote: post #108
ahaspel wrote: post #2

I rebuilt the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica into a clean, structured, navigable site: https://britannica11.org/ What it does: – ~37k articles reconstructed from the original volumes – section-level structure (contents are clickable within articles) – cross-references extracted and linked – contributors indexed and searchable – original volume + page references preserved and shown while reading – links to the original…

There’s an escaping issue in tables of contents. See, e.g., “Roosevelt's” in the “United States” article. https://britannica11.org/article/27-0635-united-states-the/u...

This is now fixed, along with several more serious rendering errors in "United States". Thanks a lot for pointing it out.

Re: Britannica11.org – a structured edition of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica

#134

Post by stephen_g »

Mr_Minderbinder wrote: post #121
lobster45 wrote: post #77

Reading medical texts from 1911 is a great way to see how far psychiatry has advanced. there was a widespread medical and societal belief that masturbation was harmful to physical and mental health. https://britannica11.org/article/14-0628-insanity/insanity?q...

In those days circumcision was the cure.

I don’t get how anyone thought that would work… From (medically necessitated) experience it doesn’t really make much difference in that respect!

Re: Britannica11.org – a structured edition of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica

#135

Post by Mr_Minderbinder »

stephen_g wrote: post #134
Mr_Minderbinder wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In those days circumcision was the cure.

I don’t get how anyone thought that would work… From (medically necessitated) experience it doesn’t really make much difference in that respect!

> I don’t get how anyone thought that would work…

The original reasoning can be found in medical texts from the mid to late 19th century when it was first discussed. My recollection is not strong enough to repeat it with confidence but it was to the effect of: the removal of the foreskin should restrict the ease of movement* and therefore restrict the ease of “self-abuse” as it was termed then.

* the foreskin functions as a sleeve which eases movement and reduces friction during sexual acts.

Re: Britannica11.org – a structured edition of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica

#136

Post by ahaspel »

aragonite wrote: post #56
realityfactchex wrote: post #15

Very, very cool. Hats off. I've considered attempting a more limited form of this for years. For those who don't know, the 1911 Britannica is heralded for several reasons (and rightly criticized for regrettable others), but the most well-known is that it was the last encyclopedia before The Great War, and hence had a good amount of steam/optimism coming from the first and second industrial revolutions and the "Progre…

> But I would love an option (emphasis on option) to see the text side by side with the page images. ... That way, I could "confirm" or "fact check" the faithfulness of the OCR. You can already do that on Wikisource. For example, here's p. 658 from the entry on "Molecule": https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:EB1911_-_Volume_18.djvu/... Also OP: I noticed some fidelity issues in your version (at https://britannica11.o…

These were both pipeline errors and they have just been corrected, thanks to your sharp eyes.

Re: Britannica11.org – a structured edition of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica

#137

Post by realityfactchex »

realityfactchex wrote: post #78
aragonite wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I would love an option (emphasis on option) to see the text side by side with the page images. ... That way, I could "confirm" or "fact check" the faithfulness of the OCR. You can already do that on Wikisource. For example, here's p. 658 from the entry on "Molecule": https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:EB1911_-_Volume_18.djvu/... Also OP: I noticed some fidelity issues in your version (at https://britannica11.o…

That's cool about the WikiSource parallel text+image page view, TIL. Thanks! As an example flow (since it took a minute to figure out): we can start at https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclopædia_Britannica then click to navigate/browse volume > section > topic to get to a text page, then click Source tab, then click a Page Number (maybe hunt around for the correct page number), and see the parallel view, text +…

Following up, another WikiSource flow is the following:

1. Go to https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britan...

2. Click button "Search the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica". This currently goes to the page at https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=&prefix...

3. Enter the search term and click Search. (There is auto-suggest for some topics, but Search button seems to give more complete results.)

4. Get to the text page of interest, such as https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britan...

5. Notice the left margin contains hyperlinks like [105] whwere 105 is the page number nd links directl;y to the side-by side view of page 105. Click the [105] link on the left (for example), to get to https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page%3AEB1911_-_Volume_02.djv... which shows the text-and-image side by side (for that page).

This flow avoids the hunting-for-the-right page step, by using the direct links.

Re: Britannica11.org – a structured edition of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica

#138

Post by ahaspel »

aragonite wrote: post #56
realityfactchex wrote: post #15

Very, very cool. Hats off. I've considered attempting a more limited form of this for years. For those who don't know, the 1911 Britannica is heralded for several reasons (and rightly criticized for regrettable others), but the most well-known is that it was the last encyclopedia before The Great War, and hence had a good amount of steam/optimism coming from the first and second industrial revolutions and the "Progre…

> But I would love an option (emphasis on option) to see the text side by side with the page images. ... That way, I could "confirm" or "fact check" the faithfulness of the OCR. You can already do that on Wikisource. For example, here's p. 658 from the entry on "Molecule": https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:EB1911_-_Volume_18.djvu/... Also OP: I noticed some fidelity issues in your version (at https://britannica11.o…

There's also a side-by-side option now. On any article, clicking the little scan button above the double-navigation arrows in the right margin will open the scan at whatever page you're viewing, and it will scroll as you scroll the text.

Thanks for the suggestion.

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