User:Apwoolrich2/Rees Sandbox

Proposal for a WikiSource Project on Rees's Cyclopaedia (1802-1819)

I suggest this will be a suitable project. The work is in 39 volumes, and has 30,400 pages. The text is in double column with an average length of 1480 words per page, which makes it around 39 million words, allowing for short pages. There over 1000 plates and an atlas.

An edition was published in America from 1805-1822 with a number of the articles re-written to reflect American religious sensibilities, additional articles and more plates.

An account of the work can be found on Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rees%27s_Cyclop%C3%A6dia.

As George Sarton said : [Encyclopaedias] 'offer one of the simplest means of recapturing the educated opinion of earlier times', A Guide to the History of Science, 1952, 82-3. Rees appeared during the second half of the Industrial Revolution, and contains a wealth of material about evolving developments in science and technology. In addition, there is a mass of other topics, and the work will be an invaluable resource for quarrying for use in Wikipedia articles

In contrast to the DNB, the text includes tables of figures, mathematical and scientific formulae, as well as musical notation, both orthodox and plainchant. All the articles have references to the appropriate plates, and it would be good if these could be hyperlinked. The editorial work will be challenging, but the editing tools developed for the DNB will be of great help in getting the job done.

2020 will be the bicentenary of the publication of the last part of the British edition of the work, and I suggest this will be an appropriate date to target for completion of the bulk of the work.