Britannica11.org – a structured edition of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica
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Re: Britannica11.org – a structured edition of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica
#2I rebuilt the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica into a clean, structured, navigable site:
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 scans for each page – ancillary material included (prefaces, abbreviations, etc.) – topic index reproduced and cross-linked – full-text search with article metadata (length, volume, etc.)
Most of the work was in parsing and reconstruction: headings, multi-page articles, tables, math, languages, footnotes, plates, and all the small edge cases that come up in a work like this.
The goal was to make something that feels like the original, but is actually usable.
I’d especially appreciate feedback on: – search quality – navigation (sections, cross-references) – anything that looks structurally off
Happy to answer questions about the pipeline or data model
Re: Britannica11.org – a structured edition of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica
#3I 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…
Thanks so much for sharing this. It looks fantastic. A couple of questions, if you don't mind: what license are you releasing this under, if any? Is there any way to download it? The reason someone might want to download it is for use as training data.
Re: Britannica11.org – a structured edition of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica
#4I 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…
Thanks so much for sharing this. It looks fantastic. A couple of questions, if you don't mind: what license are you releasing this under, if any? Is there any way to download it? The reason someone might want to download it is for use as training data.
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’d be interested to hear more.
Re: Britannica11.org – a structured edition of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica
#5A seriously trivial bug report, but the font you’ve chosen doesn’t support ℔, making articles like https://britannica11.org/article/22-0688-s2/putting_the_shot look odd. Potentially might be worth rewriting ℔ to a more normal (these days) lb?
Re: Britannica11.org – a structured edition of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica
#6The most important entry I found in my physical copy of the 1911 Britannica is for Eavesdropping[0], detailing the original historical origins of the term and how it was thought about just before our modern era.
> Though the offence of eavesdropping still exists at common law, there is no modern instance of a prosecution or indictment.
Thanks for posting this resource, I've often wanted to share a link to this and other entries.
[0]https://britannica11.org/article/08-0867-eavesdrip/eavesdrip...
Re: Britannica11.org – a structured edition of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica
#7Beautiful work! This is an amazing resource to have online. Reminds me a little of greensdictofslang.com or of Webster’s 1913, a perennial HN favorite: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29733648
Re: Britannica11.org – a structured edition of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica
#8A seriously trivial bug report, but the font you’ve chosen doesn’t support ℔, making articles like https://britannica11.org/article/22-0688-s2/putting_the_shot look odd. Potentially might be worth rewriting ℔ to a more normal (these days) lb?
Good catch — thanks. That’s a font coverage issue. I’ll either swap in a fallback font for missing glyphs or normalize those cases. This only sounds trivial, this project is full of items like that.
Re: Britannica11.org – a structured edition of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica
#9Beautiful work! This is an amazing resource to have online. Reminds me a little of greensdictofslang.com or of Webster’s 1913, a perennial HN favorite: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29733648
That’s high praise. Those are both great projects and this one is definitely in the same spirit.
Re: Britannica11.org – a structured edition of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica
#10I 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…
legal terms question here also -- several major world economies are operating under very different rules regarding datasets and publication rights. I am in the USA / California.. will there be terms for me, given that I am not a giant deep-pockets FAANG, just a book person ? commercial use terms for "small business" scale ?