Abstract
Nineteenth-century periodicals significantly outnumber books from that era, and present historians with an immensely valuable set of sources, but their use is constrained by the difficulty of identifying relevant material. For many periodicals, contents pages and volume indexes have been the only guide, and the few subject indexes that exist usually provide only an indication of the subjects mentioned in the article titles. By contrast, the Science in the Nineteenth-Century Periodical project (SciPer) indexed the science content of general-interest periodicals by skim-reading the entire text. The project's approach to indexing is described and the relative merits of indexing and digitization in aiding researchers to locate relevant material are discussed. The article concludes that, notwithstanding the more sophisticated search interfaces of more recent retro-digitization projects, human indexing still has an important role to play in providing access to the content of historic periodicals and in mapping their data structure.
Highlights
Nineteenth-century periodicals significantly outnumber books from that era, and present historians with an immensely valuable set of sources, but their use is constrained by the difficulty of identifying relevant material
North’s own Waterloo Directory of English Newspapers and Periodicals, 1800–1900 suggests that, by the end of the century, more than 20,000 periodical and newspaper titles were in print in England, while the Nineteenth-Century Short-Title Catalogue suggests that only a third that number of new books were issued each year in the main British publishing centres.[2]
Among the leading reasons for this have undoubtedly been the difficulties of access. With such an overwhelming weight of printed matter, how are historians to find material relevant to their particular researches? Even if they are aware of the relevant periodicals, how are they to pinpoint the key references across many thousands of pages? In this article, I will begin by considering the traditional means of accessing the content of Victorian periodicals
Summary
Nineteenth-century periodicals significantly outnumber books from that era, and present historians with an immensely valuable set of sources, but their use is constrained by the difficulty of identifying relevant material. Accessing the content of nineteenth-century periodicals: the Science in the NineteenthCentury Periodical project (SciPer)
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