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Web site to feature eight volumes of Lincoln
The State Journal-Register Springfield, IL
A huge chunk of Abraham Lincoln's life just went virtual, with a World Wide Web site that archives and indexes the president's writings. "The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln," an eight-volume work when published in 1953, will appear online next week, more than a year after the Abraham Lincoln Association asked a Utah software firm to take on the project.
"We expect this site is going to get a lot of play from both national and international interests," said James Johnston, executive vice president of [ WordCruncher Internet Technologies Inc. ]
The ALA began the digitization effort along with the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, for which the ALA acts as a support arm. The object is to build an online Lincoln-related library, in tandem with a real-world Lincoln presidential library planned to be built in Springfield early in the next decade.
"This is the first step in that process," said state historian Tom Schwartz. "When the Lincoln presidential library opens, there will already be this sizable body of information electronically."
The new Lincoln site is managed by Spyhop, an Internet search device created by the WordCruncher company. Once a computer user has reached the site via a Web browser, he or she can enter key words or phrases to find where they occur in the collected writings.
The search can yield writings from the towering to the mundane. For instance, a search for Lincoln's son's name, Tad, found about 18 references -- including an invitation to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton to join Lincoln, "Mrs. L & Tad" for a picnic on the Potomac River. The "[ Complete Works ] ," edited by Roy Basler, was typed into digital form by technicians in India, Johnston said. Once that was done, and the work was double-checked, programmers in Utah set about creating an electronic "concordance" of Basler's text.
A concordance is a cross-reference of every single word in a text -- where it occurs and how often. One scholar who created a concordance of the Bible spent 35 years indexing each word of the book, Johnston said. With the right software, he said, "We can do the same thing in about five days."
The project has cost about $28,000 so far. There are possibilities for expansion, such as adding some of the personal documents collected by the IHPA -- canceled checks, old bank books, even the Lincolns' grocery lists. "There are ledgers of what the Lincolns bought at various stores around Springfield," Schwartz said.
Schwartz said he hopes the Internet site, which eventually will be accessible from the ALA's homepage, will allow scholars in other countries to gain better knowledge of Lincoln. The Spyhop technology allows room for translation into various languages.
"This just allows this information to reach so many spots that published books can't possibly reach easily," Schwartz said.
The Lincoln Web site, expected to be active by Monday for Presidents' Day, can be reached through www.spyhop.com. The Abraham Lincoln Association's Web site is www.alincolnassoc.com.
(Copyright 1999)
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