User blog:George Dance/September / October 2013

In September and October the primary project remained that of revising updating and linking the bibliographies of the 19th-century poets. WorldCat remained the best source for the first, and Internet Archive for the second; but Penny and I continue to stumble over new resources. One I particularly remember was the Edgar Allan Poe Society, whose website made it possible to update our Edgar Allan Poe article by linking all the works published in the author's lifetime; but there have been several others, all acknowledged by links in the respective articles.

In the process, I have also been adding external links, particularly poems, from sites as diverse as PoemHunter and An American Anthology 1787-1900 (no article yet, but I hope to write one soon). I've also been standardizing the "about" information wherever possible, adding links to NNDB and the Encyclopædia Britannica (now that many of the latter's articles can be accessed for free; those that are still closed tend to be the most prominent historical figures, and those usually have another available biography, on Biography.com or Answers.com, that can be substituted).

Not to forget the frills; I'm also adding VIAF information (the original reason for this year's updating), eliminating red links here and there, and even rewriting once or twice. Occasionally that means rewriting an entire article, as in this (November) one on Caroline Bowles Southey. While I am not trying to add new articles, their count continues to rise with the additiona of new publishers (like David Nutt (publisher) or Longman) or critics (like Canadian Pelham Edgar, who also turned out to have written a book of poetry in his youth).

The main new frill, of course, has been pictures. The wiki now has over 2,500 photographs, several of which have been used more than once. That number will continue to climb in the future.

Another number that continues to rise is that of the poems on the wiki. My priority is still the "About Poets" module; but for relaxation or fun I will sometimes add a new discovery or old favorite. I have also reformatted a few existing articles on poems, to add pictures; I tnink it is important that every new poem have an illustration. In that regard, I was fortunate enough to find, online at Wikimedia Commons, the original artwork for many of the poems of William Blake. I urge everyone to check out the poems and pictures linked to his article.

Anyway, that's enough time spent writing on what's being done; back to the doing! George Dance (talk) 22:32, November 24, 2013 (UTC)