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."
... approximately a million news stories from the 19th century are going online ... This is good news for Slashdotters ...
t h=Junius&sid=-524841
This story is a dupe: http://yeoldeslashdott/article.asm?yere=1842&mone
If anyone actually checks it first, that is...
Also, how useful the resource is will depend as much on the interface as the material.
I just hope we don't start getting dupes from 1859 around here...
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.
the ultimate source of yesterday's news
Finally! We'll be able to scan through these ancient texts to find the original source of the hilarious "Just imagine a Beowulf cluster of these" comments, used in every single thread on Slashdot! How I laugh as I read it for the 14 millionth time!
Actually should be interesting material there: Jack the Ripper, John Christie, Mary Ann Cotton etc... Yep, 1800-1900 was a good century for the UK's mass murderers.
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
Before everyone gets carried away with the dupe jokes (as I am the submitter), I think it's important to note the cultural and scientific differences since these articles were originally written. To have a central online repository of this much data will help students to learn. Many students today rely on Google, but google is lacking complete works. Now Google will be able to index another million articles, and that means our knowledge and understanding of that era will increase as time passes. All other benefits are still important, but the student factor is, I think, the greatest part of this.
Now that a complete online library is going online, perhaps other libraries will follow suit, and keep information free?
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
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!
I hope these stories aren't like the small town papers I used to read growing up in the Appalacian Valley. "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." ..some of these small towns seem to be stuck in the 19th century. So, I would expect the mentality of the writers and editors of the 19th century to be similar.
For non-UK ./'ers, Page 3 is a page in one of our more popular tabloids, The Sun, that publishes a large picture of a semi-naked lady every day. In fact, Page 3 is the only reason anyone ever buys The Sun.
She's built like a steak house, but she handles like a bistro....
Will all this information help with any prior art stuff?
As someone who has collected the five reprints of the Daily Mail from D-Day, I can say you will see far more than just the historical facts. There is a style of cartoon drawing (Illingworth) that would probably have you suspended from high school if you were to draw anything similar Not forgetting the aerial photographs of the D-Day landings. And there are those wacky adverts (what on earth was "Grandpa Kruschen" advertising?).
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Millions and Millions of Articles put online that Slashdotters Won't Read!
I wonder if they will be putting old Playboy issues online? You know... we only read them for the articles anyway...
Linux with kernel panic...
MadPenguin.org
This is old news.
Inventor Eli Whitney Applys For "One-Click" Cotton Gin Patent
Pianists Seek Curbs on Player Piano Technology
"Roll Sharing" Circles Seen as Threat to Recital Revenues
Unsolicited Telegraph Messages on the Rise
So-called "Lard" Telegrams Now Comprise 60% of Traffic, Operators Say
Utah Granted Statehood
Gov. McBride Lays Claim to Concept of Statehood, Says Other States Owe $6.99 Each
(I think The Onion does this better than me.)
k.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
Ye firste poste.
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.
I have a bound tome of the local newspaper from the year 1905. Certainly, what a difference in culture 99 year ago!
A top political problem in Europe up to that date was women wearing long pantalons in public and irresponsible aviatics flying their fragile machines above the populated cities.(sic!) All socialist parties, which are currently at the peak of power in majority of european countries were totally outlawed, and some their members executed, because of throwing home made bombs on politicians. "War to terror" was that called.
Only things which seems to be almost identical to our time are media advertisings and patent issues.
There you are, staring at me again.
I appreciate the Wikipedia compliment, since I am one of the regular contributors. This archive would definitely fill holes in the 19th-century coverage, where other sources are relatively scarce.
Wikipedia is getting better each day, but there are still gaps in many articles I wish we could fill.
Nyekulturniy... Proudly confusing readers and editors since 1981!
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.
This is great. Imagine having tons of written history available on the net. It would give those Google guys a challenge.
Maybe there should be a Gutenberg Project for old newspapers and such. Lots of metadata for easy searching.
One of the things that drives me crazy about all the stupid copyright extensions is the amount of recent history that could be digitized. Just imagine the interesting things to be learned from minor accounts from World War II and other events. Right now it's just rotting away on paper and film.
Support the Public Domain Enhancement Act!
This reminds me of a website that Nothwestern has opened that has most of the case files from Chicago homicides from 1870 to 1930.
Take a look.
It's incredible. How did anyone ever survive the city during that time period? If you feel like doing a little sleuthing and completing some unsolved cases, check it out. There's solved cases there as well.
It's a good complement to Devil in the White City by Erik Larsen.
The other amazing this is that almost nothing has changed in over 100 years...
"Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely."
Sorry to burst your bubble but they do. I have no idea how they do it, and tbh the sheer processing power or raw manpaper of scanning scares me.
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.
RTFA? More like RTFLHYOAWN - Read the F*cking Last Hundred Years of Archived Items of Import from the Corresponding Time Periods.
The acronym loving slashdotters will LOVE this development, but then again, IANAALS (I Am Not An Acronym Loving Slashdotter)
Yup...
For me, there is something very enjoyable about news and information from the past. One of my favorite books is a reprint of a 1903 Sears and Roebuck's catalog (yes, the kind the used in the outhouse). There are devices in there that I never imagined that do not have a place in our modern world. Page after page of guns are freely sold, "nerve tonics" and the like are touted as the wonder drugs of the age. Old newspapers often have ads like this in there, which for me give a reflection of the times, just as much as the stories do. Growing up, we had a copy of a newspaper lamenting the death of Abrahah Lincoln. I am not sure if this was a reprint or not - it sure was brittle enough, and I had to look at it with one of my parents with me, so I suspect it was real. Those of you who have never been exposed to information from the past as noted above might be surprised at the pleasure you can derive from peeking into a past age.
"As the intrepid kobold companion continues his journey, he begins to wonder... if priests raises dead, why anybody die?
(shameless plug)
In a similar initiative, the company I work with has republished my country's first newspaper, from the first issue in 1812.
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
Jefe: We have scanned many newspaper stories for your slashdot background material!
El Guapo: How many newspaper stories?
Jefe: Many newspaper stories, many!
El Guapo: Jefe, would you say I have a plethora of newspaper stories?
Jefe: Yes, El Guapo. You have a plethora.
El Guapo: Jefe, what is a plethora?
This is good news for Slashdotters, as this online archival project will provide a plethora of background material for articles and comments
And we all know how much time slashdotters take to thoroughly research background material needed to create an informed and well-thought-out post.
"Hey 3l33td00d, check out this post! ClearChannel just patented short-range FM Radio!"
"Wait a second, hax0rd00d, acording to this Morning Post article I read from the UK 19th century news, there was this guy back in the UK who made an FM radio from a coconut back in 1894!"
"Dude! You're so gonna get mod points on that one!"
"Yea, took three hours to find the thing, but +5 is so worth it!"
There is a style of cartoon drawing (Illingworth) that would probably have you suspended from high school if you were to draw anything similar
Leslie Illingworth's original cartoon collection is in the National Library of Wales. The entire collection has been digitized and will be launched shortly on the Library's digital mirror.
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.
I've been working on a project similar to this for several years now. http://www.digitalnewspapers.org We have nearly 200,000 pages online and searchable.
Paper of Record is a site run by a Canadian company showing off their digitisation software. It's a pay site, but I had a trial membership, and it's pretty cool. Lots of Canadian papers, but American and other foreign ones are plentiful too. All in PDF format, with fairly accurate searching.
I just heard some sad news on wireless - Abraham Lincoln was found dead in a Washington theatre this morning. There weren't any more details yet. I'm sure we'll all miss him, even if you weren't a fan of his work there's no denying his contribution to popular culture. Truly an American icon.
"Read Ye F*cking Article"
Of course the point you make is still valid if you extend the issue to the general public funding of such resources; from licence fees to taxes. While taxation funding is preferable to licence fee funding because it is broader and creates no damage to other BBC broadcasting functions, either is preferable to none. A well functioning public domain benefits everyone by allowing creative use of resources that would otherwise be difficult to find or unobtainable.
I've done research at the Colindale library site. Let me be blunt to the point of vulgarity: it is a cunt of a place; Colindale is at the arse end of London; hard to get to; unpleasant to study in; hot sweaty and a fucking nusiance. I resolved not to go there again unless I had a choice. Broader and more convenient national, and better still global public access, would be a benefit to everyone. Research would be easier and more convenient: new better works would be created; students and researchers would produce better work's more easily etc. etc.; the public commons would be extended, rather than contracted under the prevailing "everyone must pay for everything" economists perfect pricing scheme promulgated by copyright rights-owners.
Is all this extra worth expense to the public? Damn straight it is. A bargain.
-he who laughs last, is a bit slow.
journal
What I find most interesting when reading old newspaper articles is how much the news hasn't changed. It seems that society continually struggles with the same old arguments, the same old social problems, the same old quick-fix schemes that don't work, the same diversions, the same old same old. I remember thinking to myself that news changes so little (with only the faces and names changing) that after witnessing about a decade of news you have no real need for anymore.
I would derive much pleasure from the opium-based "tonics" described in these catalogs. Ahhh, the good old days.
It could also be deliberate deception. Noam Chomsky calls this the doctrine of change of course.
The content of the doctrine is: "Yes, in the past we did some wrong things because of innocence or inadvertence. But now that's all over, so let's not waste any more time on this boring, stale stuff."
The doctrine is dishonest and cowardly, but it does have advantages: It protects us from the danger of understanding what is happening before our eyes. --Noam Chomsky
The quote about "the past is over" is interestingly typical of Dubyaspeak. It sounds like nonsense, but if you look at it closely, it's actually the most pernicious form of deception. It would be very convenient for his puppet masters if we were to all forget about all that old boring stuff from history, wouldn't it?
My site: Free Nature Pictures
OK, let me give you an example. It's been beaten to death, but it will suffice. The US govt claims that it is not practicing imperialism in the occupation of Iraq. However, a good look at the history of the US clearly shows that the US govt has frequently practiced imperialism before (this comes through despite the massive distortion applied by the mainstream US political discourse to make it seem otherwise), and that at the time they often claimed that they weren't. This observation should lead, at the very least, to a healthy skepticism about their current claims.
My site: Free Nature Pictures
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