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What's New (March 2011)

Changes to the Old Bailey Proceedings Online in March 2011 (Version 6.0)

Thanks to a generous grant from the JISC e-Content & Digitisation programme for our Crime in the Community project, we have been able to implement a number of improvements to the Old Bailey Proceedings Online during our annual update. These changes, which were planned following the completion of a User Analysis Report, are intended to further embed this resource in university teaching and research.

Personal Workspaces: Saving and Exporting Results

Users can now register to have a personal workspace, where they can save searches and individual trials (and other texts such as Ordinary's Accounts and advertisements), annotate them, organise them into folders, and export them. A tutorial, Using the Workspace, explains how to use this feature. Registered users of London Lives can use the same username and password.

Citation Generator and Print Page Function

Every trial and background page now includes a link to a popup window which provides a full citation for the relevant text, following our recommended citation format. That format has been amended to include the Version Number, to reflect the fact that the content and search facilities of this website can change with our annual updates. By consulting the What's New Archive, it is possible to identify the changes implemented in each update.

For individual trials, we have implemented a print page function, to allow users to print the text only of individual trials. Each printout includes the correct citation for that trial.

Guides, Tutorials and Bibliographies

A series of Research and Study Guides have been created to help all users get the most out of this website.

New Users should find the Getting Started and Guide to Searching video walkthroughs (and associated texts) useful introductions to the online Proceedings.

Those already familiar with this website may learn techniques for using it more effectively by watching the Using the Workspace and Doing Statistics videos. More advanced users may find useful the webpages which explain how to Organise your Research with Reference Management Tools (e.g. Zotero) and Using the API to Measure Linguistic Change (forthcoming).

Many users, particulary university students, may find the new webpages on How to Read an Old Bailey Trial and How the Proceedings are Different when Read Online illuminating, while the page on Using the Proceedings in University Teaching is designed for university lecturers. The Schools pages have been transferred back to the main website from the User Wiki, but they have not been updated.

Finally, the website Bibliography has been transferred back to the main website from the User Wiki, and an additional bibliography has been started comprised of Publications that Cite the Old Bailey Proceedings Online. Users who wish to add to either of these bibliographies can do so through our public Zotero Group Library.

Search Improvements

To make more advanced search commands easier to execute, we have introduced new radio buttons for keyword searching. Users can now choose between And, Or, Phrase, or Advanced searches. The default search is And. By selecting the Advanced search button, it is possible to use wildcards (*) and the + and - signs to create more complex searches (the technical problem with combining + and - searches has now been fixed). The what's this link provides access to a full explanation of this new feature.

To enable quick refinements to existing searches, we have added a refine search button to all search results.

Finally, and with apologies for the delay, we have reinstated keyword searching for three letter words (except stopwords).

Mapping Crime Data

Using data provided by the Mapping Crime project, we have incorporated 650 links in the Associated Records database from specific trials to ballads, last dying-speeches, and other broadsides in the online John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera from the Bodleian Library. These links will appear when the associated records for the relevant trials are listed, and they can also be searched from the Associated Records Search Page by selecting John Johnson Collection Online in the Library or Archive search box. Users will need to have subscription access to the John Johnson Collection in order to access the these online sources.

Withdrawal of the Wiki

Owing to limited use, we have regretfully withdrawn the Old Bailey User Wiki from service. Relevant biographies have been transferred to the London Lives Wiki. We have attempted to contact in advance everyone who contributed content, but if you did not get the message and have content you wish to preserve please Contact Us and we will retrieve it for you.

Three features of the wiki have been returned to the main website, where they will be preserved:

  • The Schools Pages
  • The site Bibliography
  • A Corrections facility for reporting errors. The link, Add a correction, now appears in the information box at the top of every trial. These reports will be reviewed periodically and necessary changes will be implemented during the next annual update.

Corrections

As with every update, we have taken the opportunity to correct a number of minor errors, including tagging errors and broken links.