Jeffrey Young, Online Database Will Hold the Mirror Up to 'Hamlet,' Gathering Every Commentary on the Play, Chronicle of Higher Education, May 10, 2005 (accessible only to subscribers). Excerpt: 'More has been written about Hamlet than about any other Shakespeare play, and attitudes toward the work's main character have shifted over time, says Eric C. Rasmussen, a professor of English at the University of Nevada at Reno....Mr. Rasmussen should know. He has spent the past 10 years working with a team of scholars to compile every piece of scholarship and criticism about the play, and then to link it, line by line, to the text in an online [open-access] database. The mammoth project, supported by some $1-million in grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, is nearing completion -- although editors plan to add to it as they find more material. "If you are interested in a particular line of the play, to be able to see 400 years' worth of commentary on that line is pretty remarkable," he says. About half of the group's work is available on a free Web site.'
Posted by
Peter Suber at 5/10/2005 01:50:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
