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Transcription of James Clarke's Survey of the Lakes, 1787

Transcription of James Clarke's Survey of the Lakes of Cumberland, Westmorland, and Lancashire, published at Penrith, Cumberland, 1787. The main copy used was in the Armitt Library, item A6616, which is a second edition. The maps scanned were in several collections.
source type: Clarke 1787
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Transcription

The transcript of the body text is made into records page by page, ignoring the problems that a section or sentence might be split across page breaks. Each page will be presented as a separate web page.
Somewhen, the text, at present in MODES for Windows records, will migrate to MODES xml. At this change a datastructure based on the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) will be used, though that methodology is biased towards academic study of 'Literature' rather than everyday text. TEI would mark up the whole text as one document, the particular arrangement into pages for an edition treated as a subsidiary feature. I need to have smaller units as records, which will become html pages. The book here is being treated as an object in its own right, rather than a text which just happens to be in a book, each page is a part object.
Some of the exact typesetting has been ignored, though italics and some special characters are indicated using html markup. Hyphenation across lines has been removed, judging as well as I am able to retain the hyphen where it likely belongs, comparing with the same word elsewhere in the text if possible. A word split across pages is left that way, but the beginning part of the word is added as inferred data to its continuation on the following page.
Where possible Greek and other scripts have been represented by Unicode characters, but this does not seem possible for some of the Anglo Saxon letters.
Peculiarities of spelling and grammar are preserved; they might be confirmed by '(sic)', but not very often: we have typed and have proof read as accurately as we can.
Errata from the end of the book have been added to their relevant page as a footnote.

Chapters and Sections

An attempt was made to use the chapter contents lists, given at the opening of each book and as chapter headings, to provide the marginal notes that help structure the book into sections. This fails: it is not always possible, nor sensible, so I have written my own marginals, though trying to include James Clarke's as much as they make sense.

Text Indexing

Keywords for indexing the text have been recorded, as well as I am able: mostly using today's placenames rather than the text's version; recognising unnamed places if possible; using locality type terms if nothing else is possible, objects and topics are indexed only if useful; there is likely a bias towards an interest in Cumbria. Thus, I have tried to interpret and understand the text to make the indexing helpful and comprehensible in today's world; a basic rule is 'would you want this page if you were searching with this keyword?' The placename spellings of the text are put into the Old Cumbria Gazetteer, where all sorts of spellings are indexed. Botanical names are indexed with spellings standardised to today's usual pattern, but no attempt has been made to check synonymy and regularise the binomial to a modern term.

Gazetteer Extracts

Chunks of text relevant to each place are extracted and gathered together, and loaded into the record for the place in a gazetteer. This is much easier to use for a place than searching through pages in the guide book; you can go to the original text and read it all in context if you wish. The gazetteer is arranged using standard placename spellings, today's version of the placename, but will be indexable on all sorts of spellings, and by other place data. The gazetteer also holds extracts from other sources, and map square images.
Not all keywords allocated to the text will prompt a gazetteer entry. Some places in the text will be unidentifiable some keywords are for other topics than places, char, botanical species, rocks, etc.

Is it True?

Doubt has been expressed at times about the trustworthyness of James Clarke as a reporter of facts. Perhaps he happily includes, even embroiders, what has been heard over a good dinner. I am making no judgements; the purpose here is to make his text accessible.

Maps and Plates

Maps and plates have been scanned from a miscellany of sources. Further notes:-

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