Talk:Dictionary of National Biography/Archive 1

message: Well, probably no one will see this, but does anyone know if the older parts of the Dictionary of National Biography are under copyright?  It would be a useful source for articles, if not. john 00:42, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)
replies: text: Alas, the new on-line edition is only fully compatible with Microsoft's Internet Explorer and with Netscape browsers. Opera returns error messages about non-standard Java, and though I can read and search  for articles I cannot print them directly and the help button does not function. I assume the same problem will apply to other browsers like Mozilla and Firefox. I have taken it up with the OUP and they say that are looking into it. Apwoolrich 07:18, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)

text: According to the OUP its possibly something to do with a conflict caused by a firewall, or the anti-banner setting of Opera. I have changed my Opera setting, and allow banners and whilst I can now access the help menu, the printer is not activated. I have tried it on Mozilla, and it works fine Apwoolrich 13:14, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)

text: As a contributor to the ODNB, I feel these criticisms are not justified. Some of the pieces I wrote were done in 1994, and the machinery for making instant updates for new knowledge did not exist then. Without looking up my records I am not sure about dates, but the deadline for completing the texts was a year or two before the actual publication date, so anything new published after then will not be included in the printed version, though can be updated now in the electronic one. Also, every article was written to a predetermined length to a fixed fee, so writers were not encouraged to stray outside of these boundaries. In my own field of engineering history and biography there are several articles which might have been better,including some by me, and a handful where I have spotted minor errors of spelling and dates. We could only do our best. It is perhaps significant that some of the criticisms come from people who took no part in the project. I am modifying the text on the main page to say that there has been 'some' criticism. This seems to be in literary periodicals, I am not aware of any complaint from other areas of the humanities, science and technology. Apwoolrich 08:52, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

text: Apparently, Matthew Kilburn is NPOV (No Person of Value), as you yourself appear to me Mr Apwoolrich
The ODNB welcomes constructive criticism, and as a member of staff I'd like to know exactly which corrections WB2 would like to propose. I'd appreciate it if he wrote to me at the dictionary rather than make changes to the Wikipedia article. --Matthew Kilburn 09:14, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

text: All is not lost if you want to write those articles anyway, however. Use the DNB as a guide for the information you're looking for from other sources, instead of just copying from it verbatim. Your article on Christopher Bainbridge, for example, is full of information that could be expanded into a really stellar article. Ken 03:06, August 3, 2005 (UTC)
Guess I'll just have to get on and edit them into decent articles then... Thanks for that, Hackloon 03:18, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Copyright

message: I have the thing on a CD set if anyone needs access Brookie:the wind in the grass  09:04, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: So do I, but any text on it published post 1934 is covered by copyright. It can be argued that anything taken from this disk is also copyright as it is a nrw publiction published very recently, but  what the acutual legal position is under European law is, I do not know. Many of biographies from DNB were taken as the basis for biographies in EB 11, and are generally reliable, if you need a download text to base a new work on Apwoolrich 09:37, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Disk set

message: The 1921 (?) edition of the DNB cites this historical romance as a source of fact for several articles on the lives of Elizabethan figures. The author, Charles Kingsley, was an arch bigot. It's worth a comment, but I don't have the edition to hand.--Shtove 00:12, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It might be worth a comment here, but not in the article. The original DNB contributors would have only cited Westward Ho! on the understanding that their readers would have known it was a work of fiction. There are several viewpoints in the original DNB (the '1921 edition' is an uncorrected reprint of the 1908-9 lightly revised edition) that may seem dated or offensive to some modern readers. The ODNB article on Kingsley provides some of the intellectual background to his anti-Catholic position, a stance explicable to many in British literary, intellectual and political life in the mid-nineteenth century, however misguided it may seem to us.  --Matthew Kilburn 09:52, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: But why cite a work of fiction? Maybe a comment in the article could point up the criteria used by the early editors. Kingsley is still with us - he's just relocated across the Atlantic and changed his name to Dan Brown.--Shtove 10:15, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Why cite a work of fiction? All sorts of reasons. The fiction might be based on serious historical research, or might have contributed to the shaping of a popular interpretation of events, to name two. Readers of the dictionary were always expected to come to it with their critical faculties active. Kingsley's purpose as a writer was far more intellectual than Brown's, however comparable the consequences may appear! --Matthew Kilburn 10:36, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: They wouldn't get away with it on WP. Look out! There's an albino monk behind you...Shtove 10:59, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Westward Ho! 

message: Nice idea, Mervyn, but I think it's not quite right to have a picture of OUP's Walton Street offices. For a start, the editorial office of the dictionary has never been there, so it isn't the home of the project. Additionally, the dictionary pre-dates OUP's involvement with it and it's a bit odd to have the picture juxtaposed with text which largely deals with the dictionary's origins at Smith, Elder. I won't delete it straight away, but will see what else I can come up with. --Matthew Kilburn 22:23, 4 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: perhaps a scan of the first edition title page - should be a wikipedia standard for all book articles. --mervyn 12:41, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Or a photograph of several different editions of the printed dictionary on the shelf together? --Matthew Kilburn 15:12, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Maybe a pic like that at Pauly-Wissowa ?  Anyone handy with a digital camera? --mervyn 10:17, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  OUP picture  

message: U.K. Wikipedians may like to know (if they don’t already)
The Museums, Libraries and Archives Council of the U.K. has a Digital Initiatives programme called “Reference Online: subscription-based electronic services for English public libraries” 
http://www.mla.gov.uk/
Which includes a deal on online access to ODNB.  
This means that a lot of libraries are making ODNB available free to their members.
There is a list of U.K. Public Libraries at 
http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/town/square/ac940/weblibs.html
Which includes links to their online catalogues.
They may, however, have information about access to online electronic sources on a different page.
Vernon White 09:19, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: A list of libraries with access to the ODNB is on the ODNB website at http://www.oup.com/oxforddnb/info/freeodnb/libraries , in many cases with a link to the relevant online resources page.--Matthew Kilburn 11:56, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Online Access to ODNB for UK Public Library members

message: Hi,
My library lets patrons check out the old 22-volume DNB and a search reveals that many other libraries do, as well. I'm going to check out the set, and I would be more than willing to scan a volume from my home if anyone else would be willing to jump in. I think that using OCR would probably doom the project, though. So we could follow Tim Starling's lead on Wikisource and just feature pics of the pages. Any thoughts?
Best Username Ever 09:43, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: If the old version is out of copyright then Wikisource would be an appropriate repository. -Will Beback · † · 20:21, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think some parts of the old version would still be in copyright, but others are PD.  john k 21:19, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

text: This is because there were repeated updates over the years as more people died.  I'd think that the bios for anyone who died before 1900 or so should be PD, though. john k 21:20, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The 22-volume edition at my library was published in 1917, so all of the entries in it are in the public domain. There also is a 1901-1911 and a 1911-1920 supplement which should both be ok, although scanning any supplements could wait until after the main set.--Best Username Ever 22:06, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: OK. I've got them now. It's ok if no one wants to scan them, because they're still useful. Plus, my library lets me renew books indefinitely. Heh heh heh heh.--Best Username Ever 00:23, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Anyone interested in scanning it? 

message: Although the online ODNB is subscription-only, the index is freely available online as the Oxford Biographical Index (OBI). Of the over 50,000 individuals in the index, I've automatically matched over 10,000 with wikipedia using their name and birth/death dates. Because of name variants, uncertainties about dating etc., I've supplemented this automatic matching by manual checking to find several thousand additional entries. Since OBI entries record the number of words written about each individual in the ODNB, individuals can be ranked in approximate order of their prominence. So I've found that, of the top 1000 people in the ODNB, only 5 do not seem to have their own page in wikipedia:
*Knollys, Sir Francis (1511/12–1596), politician
*Horne, Robert (1513x15–1579), bishop of Winchester
*Dering, Sir Edward, first baronet (1598–1644), antiquary and religious controversialist
*Randolph, Thomas (1525/6–1590), diplomat
*Closterman, John (1660–1711), history and portrait painter
However, 64 of the next 1000 seem to be without their own wikipedia page. I've posted 198 absent links, corresponding to the top 3,000 most prominent individuals in the ODNB, at my user page; if anyone has ideas about where most usefully to post the links I've matched, or is interested in matching ODNB entries with wikipedia pages, then please let me know here or at my talk page. Dsp13 23:31, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Matching people in the ODNB with Wikipedia

message: I am currently using ODNB cites like this:
:*Blake, R. (2004) "Lindemann, Frederick Alexander, Viscount Cherwell (1886–1957)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, online edn, May 2006, accessed 18 Aug 2007 (subscription required)
This problem is that the "subscription required" may put some people off but pretty well everyone in UK has on-line access through their local library. What we really need is a template/ script so that when you hit the link, it takes you to a page that explains how to get access. Also it would be good to have an option that you could subsequently set the link via your passwork straight into ODNB, whether UK local library/ academic institution or whatever.
That made sense to me. Hope is does to someone who has the wherewithall to set up this sort of thing.Cutler 21:52, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Script for links required 

message: Is the inclusion of references from the subscription Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB) permissible on Wikipedia? I've attempted to use this valuable and recent (2004) source to an article I've created, but two editors have frustrated my attempts. The ODNB is used to reference 385 articles on Wikipedia at present, so this is an issue that needs to be resolved. I've issued an RfC at Talk:J. F. X. O'Brien#RfC: Is the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography a valid reference on Wikipedia?.--Damac (talk) 22:04, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography a valid reference on Wikipedia?