How Familiar Is It Any More? Bartlett's Familiar Quotations Goes Digital. (off the Shelf & onto the Web)

Most librarians would agree that Bartlett's Familiar Quotations is a standard reference tool. In fact, has appeared as numbers 4 and 56 (different editions) in a list of the top 100 books libraries are most likely to own. (1) Like many other standards in reference, Bartlett's has gone online. But unlike other tools, has morphed into a variety of online and digital products, and its path has been difficult to track. In some respects, this convoluted course has caused the print version to remain critical to libraries while the electronic versions are too ambiguous in their various forms. And in other respects its place in the market of digital quotation services has brought into question the centrality of its importance. --Editor Familiar Quotations: A Collection of Passages, Phrases, and Proverbs Traced to Their Sources in Ancient and Modern Literature was first published in 1855. The latest available edition, the sixteenth, was published in 1992. Since then there have been many reprints of the sixteenth According to representatives of the publisher, both print and e-book versions of the seventeenth edition will be available in the last quarter of 2002. Besides being the first work of its kind, one key feature that distinguishes John Bartlett's Familiar Quotations from all the other quotation reference books is that the are listed in chronological order. This is an important feature, for serves not only as a reference book of but also as a documentary on the popular use of English language in Western culture in a specific period of time. This work also includes both biblical and translations of quotations. The last edition John Bartlett edited was the ninth edition and was published in 1891. The tenth edition was an enlargement of the ninth. In this edition, the original selections by Bartlett were kept intact with the inclusion of more contemporary selected by the new editor. (2) The significance of this edition will become evident as we trace the development of this reference work and its availability in digital format. In subsequent editions, each editor had the daunting task of deciding what new to include. As the Little, Brown editors of the thirteenth and centennial edition quoted from John Bartlett's preface in the fourth edition: it is not easy to determine in all cases the degree of familiarity that may belong to phrases and sentences which present themselves for admission for what is to one class of readers may be quite new to another. (3) One can see how the book can become bigger and possibly less useful if is familiarity at the time of a quotation that we hope to record and look up. By the eleventh edition, the editors had to take out quotations no longer in currency. (4) Who defines familiar and how this selection criterion is defined continues to be debated. While the significance of John Bartlett's Familiar Quotations as a major reference work continues today, its place as a key documenter of what is quotable or worth quoting at the time is also well demonstrated in the many strongly worded reactions and editorials after the publication of the sixteenth This current and latest edition has drawn much criticism from conservative critics for an overly politically liberal approach in the selection. (5) There are many comments to make about such criticism. Beck, the fourteenth edition editor, also discovered surprising omissions in the tenth edition. One might wonder if there would never be an agreement as to what would be definitively familiar unless was selected by John Bartlett himself. (6) If this were the case, any lessening of the disagreement would have more to do with respect for the original editor rather than complete agreement with what is familiar. Beck also noted that Dole, editor of the tenth edition, was the last to follow Bartlett's selection criterion of popularity closely. …

Récupéré en direct depuis OpenAlex et désinversé. Les résumés ne sont pas conservés dans cette base de données : les index inversés représentent 8,6 Go des 9,3 Go de texte de la base, et le serveur dispose de 13 Go libres.