Background:
The Welsh Biography Online includes about 5,000 biographies of eminent Welshmen and women who died before 1 January 1971. They include princes, members of the gentry, poets and writers, government officials, ministers, artisans, sportsmen, workers, soldiers, industrialists and farmers. There are biographies of famous Welsh figures such as Owain Glyndwr, Ann Griffiths, Iolo Morganwg, George Thomas and Iorwerth Peate, as well as many lesser known figures in Welsh life. It is an invaluable resource to all who are interested in Welsh history and culture.
Technology:
The Welsh Biography Online is the result of an investment by the National Library of Wales in text conversion and encoding using pioneering XML technologies. The full text of the five printed volumes, together with new articles, has been combined here in one bilingual electronic database. The printed texts were converted to text files by TechBooks, Inc. Maryland, USA and Delhi, India, and extensively encoded by Library staff according to the TEI (Text Encoding Initiative) standard.
Initially the Welsh Biography Online was held in a single TEI file containing the text from the original volumes. As part of this upgrade, the TEI was split into article XML files and is now displayed using the cocoon framework (
http://cocoon.apache.org/). The search functionality has been achieved through the use of another Apache project, Lucene (
http://lucene.apache.org/) and both are hosted on an Apache Tomcat server (
http://tomcat.apache.org/).
These advances will enable users to undertake quick, easy and precise searches, transforming a scholarly publication into an online resource.
Editorial note:
The project was established with the kind permission of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, publishers of the original volumes, and its original aim was to present the work in electronic form. As a result, errors found in the text have not been altered but have been recorded in the encoding to enable their future correction. Exceptions to this rule are changes to a few misspelt names in order to facilitate efficient searching. The prefaces, appendices, editorial sections and lists of contributors, included in the printed volumes, will be added in due course.
The future:
This is the first phase of an ambitious project to develop the Welsh Biography Online. The Library aims to enrich the resource by adding portraits, paintings, sound and video recordings. More sophisticated searching will be developed as well as hyperlinks to other materials and resources. Also, as there will be no further additions to the printed publication,
The Dictionary of Welsh Biography, this website will be the only vehicle for publishing new articles on Welsh men and women who have died since 1970.
If you should notice any errors in this resource, we would be grateful if you would inform us by email to
wbo@llgc.org.uk
Copyright Statement:
© 2007 All rights reserved.
© The National Library of Wales, 2007 The National Library of Wales owns the copyright to this electronic version, including its encoding, its electronic structure, its visual and its virtual presentation.
© Copyright of the articles is owned by their named Contributors (or their heirs). The National Library of Wales has made every effort to discover the names and addresses of every copyright owner to ask their kind permission to publish these electronic versions of their intellectual property. These efforts are continuing; but despite all our endeavours, some copyright owners remain unknown to us. Given the importance of securing the permission of every copyright owner, the National Library would be grateful for any information leading to information about the remaining unknown copyright owners.
© The Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion of London, 1953-2001. The Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion of London owns the copyright of the printed versions, and the front and back pages. The National Library of Wales acknowledges the Honourable Society's generosity in giving its kind permission to publish this work in electronic form.
