Some fannish resources

[regshoe]

snowflake_challenge #5 is to share three creative/fannish resources, spaces or communities you use or enjoy... My fandoms are mostly too tiny to have much in the way of fandom-specific resources, so this post has ended up as a collection of resources useful for old/historical book fandoms in general.

First of all, resources that provide free access to ebooks of old books are very important to me! Project Gutenberg is the big one, and has a wide range of amazing, sometimes very obscure books (a few of which I put there, hehehe :D ). Its Canadian cousin Faded Page is also well worth knowing about—Canada's less stringent copyright laws mean this site has a lot of stuff that's not yet eligible for PG. And Wikisource is often worth a look, especially for things that aren't full-length books.

For stuff even more obscure than that, and also for all sorts of random minutiae, the redoubtable Internet Archive really can't be beaten. It has nineteenth-century Jacobite history books, eighteenth-century copies of the Scots Magazine, old issues of the magazines in which D. K. Broster's short stories were published, etc. etc. Their lending library is also a great way to find books in that annoying in-between category of old and obscure enough to be seriously difficult to find IRL but not yet out of copyright. Hathi Trust is also worth a look for this sort of thing, although it is much less accessible and download-friendly.

The Oxford English Dictionary is another extremely useful resource. Access to the site is by subscription, but many public libraries and academic institutions have access—I can use my library card to log in from my home computer. I use the dictionary a lot while writing, often for simply checking meanings (wait, does redoubtable definitely mean what I think it means??? Yes it does—OK, great...), but also for checking whether this or that word or phrase is period-appropriate for historically-set fic, and the OED is great for this with its lists of dated examples and etymological explanations. It's very thorough and contains a lot of useful and interesting information!

Comments

[sweetsorcery]

I love all those too, being very much into historical and book fandoms myself. Hadn't heard of Faded Page though, so yay! Great selection. :)

[regshoe]

Thank you!

[muccamukk]

At least for 20th century stuff, I use google ngram a lot for when words of phrases came into common use. I should see if my library lets me on to OED though! I use the free online Miriam Webster one, and it's not that detailed.

[regshoe]

I like Google ngrams too—it is fascinating to see how a word changes in frequency over time, as well as when it came into use—although I do like to get the context from the dictionary—several of the anachronisms that have tripped me up while writing have been words that have changed meanings, for example.

[muccamukk]

Yeah, or changes in spelling, or typos! I once looked at my own given name, and was puzzled to see a spike in the 1600s. Only to find out their text reading program had gotten the word wrong, and it a noun that was one letter off.

[regshoe]

Huh, that is a pitfall! I have just discovered (from sanguinity's post on resources for period language) that Ngrams actually does let you see examples, so that'll be useful in future.

(Aww, your icon! That was well timed—I've just been reading John Halifax, Gentleman, whose narrator repeatedly compares himself and his best friend to David and Jonathan, including calling the BFF David as a nickname...)

[muccamukk]

You can also search google books for the word/phrase and filter by year! Which is what ngrams is essentially pulling from in the first place. Ask me how much time I spent on "Champaign Socialist" last year, lol.

[regshoe]

Oh, that's useful!

[garonne]

I didn't realise the Internet Archive had more recent books. I only ever came across it when searching for 18th C Jacobite-related stuff. Thanks to your link, I just found a book I'd been looking for! (Biggles Flies East)

[regshoe]

It is very useful—they've got Sutcliff and Aubrey-Maturin and all—and hooray for finding a Biggles book on there :D

[luzula]

I use all of these a lot, too. : )

[regshoe]

:) They're very useful!