Wikipedia:1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica

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The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica is out of copyright and can in some cases be used as a source of material for the English Wikipedia.

A scanned version of the encyclopedia has been posted at 1911encyclopedia.org. CD-Roms can be purchased at classiceb.com. Neither of these are from the publisher of the modern Encyclopædia Britannica.

However, it is now quite old, and there are many problems with this material in a modern encyclopedia.

The following is a checklist of things to do to make this material most useful for Wikipedia.

  1. Use for information only: Strongly consider using the article for information only. That is, restructure and rewrite the whole article, supplementing the encyclopedia information with other sources. That isn't always worth the effort, so the following are some points to keep in mind when using encyclopedia material.
  2. Unreliable scanned source: Since the source is scanned, there are often typographical errors or gaps in the text, often where there are accents or other diacritical marks, and also particularly at the end, where some material may be at the top of the succeeding article. You must copy-edit material carefully for gross errors, give it Wikipedia markup, and, as always, check the Wikipedia index for associated material and link as needed.
  3. Unreliable old information: Many facts given have been supplanted, diseases overcome, kings overthrown, new materials and new uses for old materials discovered, and so forth. You should run a Google search or check some other reference sources and not rely entirely on the Encyclopædia material.
  4. Obsolete formatting and wordiness: The articles are very complete and the paragraphs are very long. Almost all articles can benefit from being broken up into shorter paragraphs for online reading and most articles can be shortened without loss for modern readers. You may also want to insert crossheads every time the subject changes. Dates should be converted from forms like 17th of June 1844 to June 17, 1844. The bibliographical notes are particularly cluttered and should be pared down to title, author, and date.
  5. Old fashioned attitudes: Many attitudes expressed are outdated, particularly with regard to race. Phrases like "the first white man" can be replaced by "the first European". Other attitudes may be prudish or too much in line with the interests of Victorian England.
  6. Names have changed: Many names have been changed as colonialism has been replaced by nationalism. Fernando Po is now Bioko. "Somali country" is now Somalia (and part of Yemen), and so forth. Many people familiar to the 1911 reader have slipped into obscurity. It is no longer sufficient to say "Lord Derby said"; he has to be identified more.
  7. British spelling: The presentation is British, and also designed for compactness. In accordance with Wikipedia policy, if the topic is American it may be best to change spellings like "labour" to "labor"; if a British subject, the British English spelling is preferable. You may also want to add periods after "Mrs" and the like. Both British and American spelling styles per se are perfectly acceptable in the Wikipedia, so this is up to your own tastes.
  8. Victorian prose should be checked but can be quoted: The prose style is Victorian and sometimes may seem somewhat stuffy to modern eyes. On the other hand, it has a much stronger point of view than the usual modern encyclopedia. You may want to change wording here and there. If the Encyclopædia makes a particularly striking judgement, rather than paraphrasing, you may simply want to quote it directly:
    The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica puts it, "Burton had not the charm of style or imagination which gives immortality to a book of travel."

There is some beautifully written material in the Encyclopædia that has not been outmoded and still can serve modern readers as is. You should feel free to quote even long sections as long as you do so from an original hardcopy source, giving proper credit and including a link to 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica.

Although the Encyclopædia is not copyrighted and you can copy its phrasing directly, Wikipedia cannot advertise the presence of this material using the word "Britannica", which is a trademark of Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Of course, we can still use that phrase within our pages to give proper credit. Indeed, you should always cite your sources in a References section on the same page.

The 1911 Encyclopædia can continue to be a resource for readers well into the 21st century with some care and discretion in using it.

Contents

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Recommended reference style

==References==
*{{1911}}

Which looks like:

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References

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Legal notes

Sometimes versions of the 1911 EB may claim a new copyright. The following may clarify the merits or otherwise of such a claim.

In US law, typographical corrections are not sufficient to create a new copyright. Sites which rely on that and/or correction of scanning don't actually have a valid copyright claim unless they add some new creative content. See the West Publishing decisions described at Feist v. Rural and this quote from Matthew Bender v. West Publishing Co., which is itself taken from Grove Press, Inc. v. Collectors Publication, Inc., 264 F. Supp. 603, 605 (C.D. Cal. 1967):

"Plaintiff made approximately forty thousand changes from the Verlag copy in producing its edition. These changes consisted almost entirely of elimination and addition of punctuation, changes of spelling of certain words, elimination and addition of quotation marks, and correction of typographical errors. These changes required no skill beyond that of a [1967] high school English student and displayed no originality. These changes are found to be trivial." [1]

In addition, correcting a scan to restore it to the original text is not creative, since it's simply restoring the work to its original public domain form.

Care is needed to distinguish between such "trivial" changes which don't create a copyright and the possibility that there's a new article of some sort involved, for any new original article could be copyrighted.

Trademark law doesn't provide ongoing protection beyond the expiration of copyright. See Dastar Corp. v. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. (2003),

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Possible notes from the operator of 1911encyclopedia.org

Several anonymous edits may or may not be from the site operator and have been moved to this section in italics. If you are the operator of the site or producer of the CD-ROM, please use this area for your comments, to keep them distinct from the edits made by Wikipedia contributors and the view of the Wikipedia project contributors about what your legal rights are.

LoveToKnow is also in the process of updating entries and adding new articles, which are obviously also under copyright. This on line version cannot be used, except as any other copywritten work. Also note the License and Terms of Use agreement for the LoveToKnow site, specifically section 5: "5. Use on Other Web Sites. The Contents are licensed only for the personal, household, educational use by a single individual. Reproducing Content on another site or redistributing Content is forbidden. Taking Content from this site and editing it and posting it on another site is also forbidden. Framing of this site is forbidden."

The section about scanning reliability was removed and has been restored.

The Encyclopædia is not copyrighted and you can copy its phrasing directly as long as you have an original hardcopy source and do the transcribing yourself.

The fact that whoever wrote that used the term "copywritten" rather than "copyrighted" implies that they have a poor grasp of copyright law — PhilHibbs | talk 15:55, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
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