Wikisource:WikiProject DNB

Welcome to WikiProject DNB.

The Dictionary of National Biography (DNB) is a standard work of reference on notable figures from British history, "from earliest times to the present", i.e. up until the time it was published, from 1885 to 1900. It is a massive work, comprising 63 volumes and encompassing over 27,000 biographies. Even though it is now more than a century old, the original edition remains an important reference work; and is the best secondary source for many of the subjects or aspects of their biographies. Our project aims to make this work available online in an accessible form. As of February 2013, all DNB first edition and first supplement articles are present at Wikisource. Our project now aims to improve the DNB here in several ways. These include additional proofreading, additional internal linking, and completion of linking to Wikipedia.

Why the old Dictionary of National Biography?

 * ... a successful reference work which is more than the sum of its articles

The Victorian writing style and point of view in the Dictionary of National Biography (DNB) can make reading some of the material tedious, and more recent publications may have updated the information, but that does not diminish the importance of this work as a comprehensive source of British biographies. For many of the minor figures, the DNB's information is still the basis of academic work published a century or more later, as can be seen surprisingly often.

The goal of this WikiProject is to make the original sources available in one place where the text may be verified, and links made to other information. If for no other reason, Wikipedia makes extensive use of the DNB as a reference. By posting a pair of articles with interwiki links, one here that is the original, and another at Wikipedia that is lighter on some of the detail and citations of primary sources, but also updated and corrected, we can add reading value to both articles, and give real help to those with a serious interest.

There are some thousands of DNB articles here without WP equivalent. See.

The Wikipedia sister project
The need for cross-wiki collaboration has led to the creation of a sister project: w:Wikipedia:WikiProject Dictionary of National Biography. We hope that participants in the Wikipedia project will use articles that we have already transcribed. Going the other way, we link each of our articles to the corresponding Wikipedia article when it exists. as of 2021-01, the primary linkage is performed automatically, via Wikidata. Some editors who are members of both projects are actively creating WP articles for each WS article.

The goal of the Wikipedia project is to add useful information to Wikipedia, while the ultimate goal of our Wikisource project is to transcribe the DNB into a web-friendly form that is easy to use and reference. If you are new to our project and wish to help but do not know where to start, please consider adding articles to WP from. If you are willing to do the hard work, please consider proofreading our sources in "page space." Each page of the original DNB is available, and must eventually be progressed by three separate editors from "not proofread" to "proofread" and then to "verified."

Wikisource embedded links
As of 2021-01, the primary goal of this Wikisource project is largely complete, but an important secondary goal is to add wiki links to each of the internal cross-references within the original DNB text. These internal cross-references take several forms (see /Wikification).

Comparison with the ODNB
We are not the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, the modern version of the DNB that is a magnificent subscription site of over 50,000 updated biographies and a total number of words around 65,000,000. We can rival the ODNB in various worthwhile ways:
 * by being free, evidently;
 * by linking to a WP article that is kept updated, so that anyone reading articles in WP/WS pairs will get a very fair view of what is known;
 * by being hypertext.

The last point is worth plenty, in fact: the DNB text mentions thousands of place names, for example, often enough in obsolete spellings, and we can link those. For all its virtues, the ODNB has hardly entered the hypertext age.

Copyright status
This project has not been endorsed by the Oxford University Press or any agent, editor, or subsidiary thereof. The Oxford University press has been the publisher of the Dictionary of National Biography since 1917. Modern derivatives and supplements, now known as the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography continue to be protected by copyrights. The 1900 DNB, the first two supplements, and the early reprints are in the public domain because their copyrights have expired.

Inaccuracies
Wikisource's edition of the DNB is based upon the knowledge available at the time of original publication. Research continued as new sources were discovered. These new sources, reflected in later editions, were initially captured in the 1904 Errata. Readers should bear this in mind when using the information and verify the absence of applicable errata for these articles prior to use. If a Wikipedia article is available, it should be consulted for possibly more recent information.

Structure and points of discussion
The initial structure of this project borrowed heavily from WS:EB1911. Various suggestions for piecemeal change have since been adopted. There is room for further improvements in the ways of working.

This is a work in progress, and you should feel free to add to the list of things to consider. Some of them are:
 * Meeting, greeting and helping: welcoming participants for this mammoth task, and providing practical assistance.
 * Checking processes. We use the coding in the Page namespace that can be read from the bar below the article titles.

Overview
Our project has processed scanned text into Wikisource pages. We support this activity with necessary auxiliary pages.

Several mass scanning projects have scanned the original 63 volumes of the DNB. We have attempted to find the "best" scan for each volume, and these have been copied into the Wikisource "page space" to use as the basis for this project. However, none of the scans is perfect, and in many cases some pages of the "best" scan are not as good as the same page of an alternate scan. As the project has evolved, our methods of tracking the original scans have changed. As of 2011-12-10, you can find all 63 scans in wikisource page space. You can access the page space scan for a particular article as follows: For pages that are not part of articles, you may find pages for a particular volume as follows: This link also provides information about any alternate sources we have found. If you find additional alternate scans on the Internet, feel free to edit the relevant "access" page to add the new source. As a last resort, some team members have access to the original hard-copy DNB and can scan the pages. Add a request to the talk page if this proves necessary. (So far, we have found online alternates for each request.)
 * go to Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900
 * go to the appropriate volume
 * go to the appropriate article
 * click on the page numbers in the left-hand column
 * go to Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900
 * click on the volume of interest (e.g., Abbadie - Anne)
 * click on the "Access scanned source of Volume" link (e.g., Access scanned source of Volume 01)

Before the scans were available in page space, some articles were created by directly adding the text to the article either from an OCR version on the internet or by manual transcription. A few of these may remain, but we are attempting to convert them.

The scanned text you need should be by the djvu. When it is, the proof-reading task is conventional, with some standard format and markup conventions. The proofed text can be advanced in status (pink to yellow to green) using the radio buttons at the bottom of the editing box.

Articles in the main namespace have been created by transclusion, so any subsequent proof-reader finding errors can navigate back to the djvu and parallel text, using the left-margin figures or the transclusion data accessible via the "edit" tab, and can fix them in the pagespace version. These corrections (caching permitting) then will be found in the article.

To complete the picture, the auxiliary pages divide into those that provide listings, and templates: firstly


 * listings by volume (the volume ToCs);
 * listings by author, on each Author page for a contributor.

Each single biography has been listed in both those places. The project has created an Author page for each DNB contributor: See Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/List of Contributors, and a reference for the abbreviations.

There is a template for each contributor, such as DNB AA, and each article uses the correct template. (A small proportion of unsigned articles exist in the DNB).


 * /DNB initials templates/

Style Manual
We aim for a "letter-perfect copy" of the original DNB. But what exactly does this mean when we transform a set of 63 nineteenth-century books into pages on Wikisource? The project members have found a reasonable way to do this, and we have documented it. See WikiProject DNB/Style Manual. If you encounter a problem that is not covered on the style manual, use its talk page to discuss your problem. We can then add the solution to the style manual. You should consult the style manual if you are proofreading.

Using transclusion
Few (normal) people read a volume of a long biographical dictionary from cover to cover. It is a reference work, and the natural unit for the reader is the article. To do the two things at once (reproduce the paginated text, produce single articles) is quite possible, using the transclusion of whole or partial pages into articles. For one fundamental aspect of the activity of the project, checking the text against the image of the original in our djvu files, this has a clear advantage: correction of an error found with the text next to the image will propagate into the free-standing article. And then anyone can go and verify a spelling or date (say), and make a change if one is needed.

The technical requirements to do the transclusion are twofold: markup in the Page: namespace, which is simple and something of which the reader will not be aware; and the transclusion syntax applied by the article creator, which lives on the article page. The transclusion infrastructure should already exist for all articles, so proofreading corrections should only be needed in page space.

Early in the project some pages were created simply by article text plus header only. If you encounter such a page, please mention it on the talk page here so we can re-create it using transclusion. See /Transclusion.

Reporting and requesting
Scale is an issue for this project, and the need for collaboration on the creation from rough raw materials of approximately 30,000 articles hardly needs stating. We developed structures to ensure that anyone who becomes aware of issues relating to the work of the project can report them.
 * Category:Problematic is used across Wikisource for tagging pages that are obviously defective; we now use its DNB subcategories systematically. Defective pages in the Page should be categorised, to aid cleanup of djvus and text. For example, for the notorious "interleaved text", for example, where the two-column format has defeated the scanner which has read across the whole page, please report bad cases of this text problem by adding Category:Problematic DNB pages, text.
 * /Progress has tabulated information relating to the 63 volumes and their issues. This is the place to leave reports of "bot hiccups" or other problems with the initial postings of djvus.
 * /Data capture is really an automated version of "Most wanted" designed to pick up needy Wikipedia articles, those that could use article creation here to provide a good Web reference. This page now carries links to Wikipedia pages that track the template use.

Participants
Add your name here with ~ if you wish to join the team!
 * created stub project -Arch dude 02:44, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
 * created several entries before it became a project. Eclecticology 08:43, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Recently trying to focus on Volume 6. Eclecticology - the offended (talk) 16:41, 21 August 2009 (UTC)
 * happy to type and reference, and done bits already. Would suggest that we would at least want to add WP:PDATA components Billinghurst 15:35, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Well done you guys... I don't know I'll be as active as you but I'll definitely try to lend a hand Dsp13 (talk) 04:57, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Charles Matthews (talk) 12:36, 20 June 2009 (UTC)
 * working on volume 11 sporadically --Magnus Manske (talk) 11:42, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Working on a small part of volume 34 initially. Mark.s.shaw (talk) 10:41, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I'll do a bit, Magna Carta leaders led me here Innotata (talk) 00:13, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Starting at the beginning. Jan 1 naD  (talk • contrib) 23:19, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Would like to give it a go. Daytrivia (talk) 19:06, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Stumbled here by accident. Looks like fun...I'll spend time on volume 28.JamAKiska (talk) 13:05, 21 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm de facto working on it, might as well list meself here. MLauba (talk) 10:46, 7 April 2010 (UTC)
 * P. S. Burton (talk) 20:54, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
 * If it's helpful, I can cut and paste from an electronic version of the DNB, which should save transcription from images.--Longfellow (talk) 17:17, 29 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Tommy Jantarek (talk) 00:59, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I have referenced this project in my wiki editing without realising it. Met the nice at the recent Cambridge 8 meet-up. I would be glad to help --Senra (talk) 12:44, 25 July 2010 (UTC)
 * George Burgess (talk)
 * Bob Burkhardt (talk) 17:59, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Guess I've been in for some time ... Rich Farmbrough, 23:11 9 October 2011 (GMT)
 * I will certainly try my best to help out with this one.--Inobtanium (talk) 13:59, 2 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Still needing help?
 * I was reading Murdac, Henry (DNB00) and surprised by the lack of Wikilinks on the q.v.'s. So I added them, and ended up validating the corresponding page and a couple more. ColinFine (talk) 12:46, 3 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Interesting project Henkenny (talk) 22:39, 4 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Will work on DNB27. ミラP@Miraclepine 21:40, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

Index of project internal links

 * Blind [q. v.] links are now handled by piping to Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Blind links. A "blind" q. v. is one for which the corresponding article was never added to the DNB.
 * /Cleanup /
 * /Completions / tracking complete volumes and letters
 * /Data capture / lists WP articles citing DNB text that is not yet here in article form
 * /DNB00 active, authors needing DNB00 articles
 * /DNB01 completions, authors needing first supplement articles only to be complete to 1901
 * /Errors and errata /
 * /FAQ /
 * /Listings /, progress report on the volume ToCs and author page listings
 * /Master lists /
 * /Messy lists / (now obsolete)
 * /Most wanted articles /
 * /Pagefinding / - detailed explanation of how to navigate into pagespace using index pages
 * /Progress / tabulates how it is going on the technical side; /Djvu files is yet more detail arising
 * /Raw materials / about text scans
 * /Statistics /
 * /Style Manual /
 * /Terminating hyphen / maintenance page for word breaks at end
 * /Tools /
 * /Transclusion /
 * /Unpopulated / - DNB author pages bearing the populate tag
 * /Unsigned / - list of articles unsigned in the original DNB
 * /Walkthrough / - a detailed "how-to" guide
 * /Wikification / - discusses added hyperlinks
 * /WP referencing /


 * Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900 gives access to completed articles listed for each volume
 * Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/List of Contributors for the relevant author pages
 * Dictionary of National Biography, 1901 supplement provides access to 3 Volume supplement published in 1901 and 1904 Errata.
 * Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement provides access to 3 Volume supplement published in 1912
 * Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement provides access to 1 Volume supplement published in 1927
 * /1912 authors / for the second supplement
 * 1927 contributors
 * Category:DNB
 * Category:Problematic under P for problem djvu pages, and sorted pages in subcategories Category:Problematic DNB pages, djvu, Category:Problematic DNB pages, text
 * A means to search for text in the DNB within Page namespace (workspace search only)


 * 26671692 — check for missing DNB link, author has biography, requires addition to resolve

Finding aids

 * University of London Student Records