Slashdot Mirror
19th Century News Coming Online
mfh writes "The BBC is reporting that approximately a million news stories from the 19th century are going online. The project will cost roughly $3.6 mil USD (converted from UK pounds) and include 100 years of news and images from publications that are no longer copyright protected, and currently only available at the Newspaper Library in Colindale, North London. 52000 newspapers and magazines will be included and the project should take 18 months to complete. This is good news for Slashdotters, as this online archival project will provide a plethora of background material for articles and comments, and possibly pave the way for better online library projects with more current material."
If anyone actually checks it first, that is...
Also, how useful the resource is will depend as much on the interface as the material.
Does it have a million news stories from the 19th century?
No, well thats at least one benefit.
lexis-nexis seems to cost money too.
You were just going for a early post werent you, regardless of actually having anything worth saying.
Bush and Blair ate my sig!
It might even help people find prior art for some of the goofey patents we get these days.
D.O.U.O.S.V.A.V.V.M.
I mean I like pr0n too, but access to the vast libraries of historical documents out there strikes me as what we all thought would be accessible to us back in the days of Tom Swift.
Vote Quimby!
Will all this information help with any prior art stuff?
Millions and Millions of Articles put online that Slashdotters Won't Read!
Becouse as the old addage goes, "If you don't learn from the past you are doomed to repeat it". That alone is enough incentive to study the past, with an eye to the future so we can learn from the mistakes of past generations.
This resource does not appear to me to overlap significantly with Lexis-Nexis or Wikipedia. Theatre reviews and opinion pieces on textile tariffs dating from the 1830s - not to mention the volumes of irredeemable fluff that fill out any newspaper - are not 'information' of the kind you seem to mean. If you just want to find out about ... um ... anything - as everyone does - you aren't going to go looking for it here. The potential of the resource is almost purely academic, I think: it makes researching the culture and daily detail of Victorian London more convenient for eggheads and dilettantes alike.
I want to know more about what the resource will look like. The article is light on details. Are they going to preserve full-page layouts and typography? Will article text be searchable, or just leaders and keywords? What's editorial policy on the boring and lame? The BBC piece leans hard on a few name-drops, but scholarly editions will have already collected most or all of Thackeray's reviews and criticism; Thackeray is less valuable, in this context, than the dreck and bumbasting that can't be found anywhere else.
They say that those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it, but I think those who learn from history are doomed to repeat it anyway.
"I think we can all agree, the past is over." --Dubya
Seriously, though, the past is interesting because it continues to have effects on the present and the future. Also, because we can learn from patterns that have occurred in the past and from past misakes, so stydy of the past helps us to understand what's going on right now. I think a lot of people who want us to forget the past have very specific things in mind from the past that they'd like us to forget.
My site: Free Nature Pictures
> I gotta ask- why would think this would create "background material for articles?"
My take on it was that with a million articles dating back to the 19th century could back up comments and articles that touch on the early roots of technology or modern science, and perhaps these sources could lead to some interesting comments on the subject matter, or possibly even revelations? Who knows what we'll find? Maybe once the library is used more and more frequently, they will begin adding many more works to it as well.
Whenever someone is talking about famous scientists, any additional info can help, and many many many stories on Slashdot discuss historical features.
I wasn't saying it would be a good source, but that it would help back up statements in stories with additional links to resources. Look at some of the math theories being solved today, for instance; how many of these unsolved mysteries posed in the 19th Century? Many, if I'm not mistaken.
I don't think anyone can be certain how this will exactly affect Slashdot, but I'm guessing that extra info from this era couldn't hurt, right?
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
At last we will have easy access to prior art for all those stupid US patents!
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
Presumably, many if not all of the archived newspapers are from major cities -- London, obviously, and also Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, etc. There will be an abundance of sensationalism (19th century journalism makes complaints about modern journalism -- charges of a lack of objectivity and the "if it bleeds, it leads" policy -- seem like a joke) but probably not the provincialism you're expecting.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
History is to the nation what memory is to the individual.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
The cost is 2,000,000 - for those of us who aren't actually American. Believe it or not michael (just a guess at the editor's name, I didn't look - but let's face it, it'll be him), some people don't come from America. It doesn't cost any dollars, because dollars aren't paying for it. Twat.
considering how rapidly CURRENT stories seem to 'disappear' from modern 'news' outlets like yahoo & msn etc this is hilarious - we'll be able to look up stories that are a century old easier than ones from a few months ago...
ironic, i think so...
Gekido's Lair
What I mean by that is, while it may seem a bit farsical that a small town paper would write, as you joke,
"Mr. and Mrs. Smith had dinner at old widow Jackson's house Sunday after church meeting. Her leg is healing fine. They sat around and watched Andy Griffith reruns and ate collard greens n' such."
What the journalist covering this is doing on a "small town" scale isn't so different from what many publications do on a world scale.
If that were rendered
"Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip had dinner at Buckham Palace Sunday with the French Ambassador after a service at Westminster Abbey. Buckingham Palace has said that the Queen is recovering from a flu, but was feeling well enough to attend the event."
It wouldn't seem so farsical. It's hard for me to comprehend life in my Grandmother's home town of Aneroid, Saskatchewan, Canada, a town of around 25 residents at any given time. But in a town of even significantly larger size, it's natural that there should be royalty in the social orders worth mentioning.
Ah, so it's working. Sad to see.
No, you don't. However, have you ever heard the phrase "pattern of behavior" before?
My site: Free Nature Pictures