The immediate purpose of this project is to supply a reference work for use in literature classes at Virginia Tech, reproducing on-line the kinds of information one finds at the back of Norton or other anthologies. But since it would be composed using definitions that we would write, supplemented by public-domain material, the database could be made generally available. It would differ from similar projects by using extensive material drawn from pre-1925 dictionaries, encyclopedias, manuals, and textbooks, making this a reference tool of value to research scholars as well as students. In addition to a modern definition for a term, the database, along the lines of the OED, would illustate how words like "fable," "romance," "allegory," or "novel" were used in the sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth century.

Web pages would be generated on the fly from a set of database files for terms, categories, illustrations, authors, and sources (the latter two giving information about the historical material going into the database). The database format allows us to add new records for terms, authors, and sources texts without having to update links on existing records. It will also allow for keyword searching on terms and author names, sorting by date or alphabet, and so on. The project could grow incrementally as new terms and illustrations are added. By the time we have digested fifteen or twenty source books we will have a really useful resource consisting of hundreds of terms and thousands of illustrations. Based on my experience with the Spenser project, I anticipate that this could be done in a year or two.

There would be little if any cost associated with the project, and I am willing to put considerable time into it (as an antiquary, I just love old reference books, and it would amuse me to supply some biographical particulars on hoary old philologists). The project could be co-sponsered by the English Department and CATH, the former supplying an editorial board to determine scope and contents, the latter a technical board to determine the design of the database and web pages. Most of the important decisions would be made up front, as we decide what kinds of information we wish to record, and how it is to be organized. Thereafter the project can simply grow as new records are added. A good deal of this work could be done by students transcribing entries from dictionaries and encyclopedias borrowed from Interlibrary Loan; perhaps this is the sort of project for which they could get a research fellowship.

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