Q. How do I get a complete list of titles in the CELT system?
A. To see which texts have been scanned and are to be published, see our captured texts. This webpage also tells you which editions we are using. The published files can be viewed according to the languages in which they are. A full list is given on the Published page. By 13 November 2007 there are 719 texts available directly on this page. Some other documents, such as Bardic Poetry (156 texts), and writings by Pádraig Pearse (51 texts), are available on the Published page through links.
Q. I love history and literature and have some free time. How can I volunteer?
A. Ni hannsa (not difficult). Just get in touch with us. We are looking for volunteers to proof-read early modern English documents, Latin sources and Early Modern/Middle Irish texts.
Q. How many texts have you in total?
A. By 13 November there are 936 texts available, totalling c. 10.6 million words. 447 source documents were written in Irish, and 381 in English. 17 were written in Latin, and 2 in French. One source text was written in Spanish. There are 83 English, 6 German, and 3 French translations. Some Irish text files contain an English translation (eg G102004, G105007, G203001A, G600010, G600030, G602001).
Q.Why are Míchéal Cléirigh and his Associates not mentioned as authors in the Annals of the Four Masters?
A.Míchéal Cléirigh and his associates, C Choigcriche Cléirigh, C Choigcriche Duibhgheannain and Fearfeasa Maoil Chonaire, were commissioned by Feargal Gadhra to compile the Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland, and they have always been known as the compilers of this great work. For further reading, we recommend O'Donnell histories: Donegal and the Annals of the Four Masters by Bernadette Cunningham, Rathmullan & District Local Historical Society; Rathmullan 2007.
Q.Will you have more literary and historical texts in English texts available?
A.We have been publishing Anglo-Irish texts, including literary works, from the 18th to early 20th centuries in 2006 and early 2007, in a project called Writers of Ireland, which was funded by the UCC President's Strategic Fund. We hope to add to our collection occasionally. Above all we would like to thank our volunteer proofreaders who freely give of their time and help us publish more texts. Without them, we would not be able to work on many of the texts offered to you, because there are just too many interesting and fascinating texts. We also welcome any collaboration with other projects in this area.
Q. Will you have more English translations?
A.Yes, we will. In line with our primary aim to publish the original texts to the Internet in a scholarly project, we will be publishing more English translations. A translation is the translator's intellectual property, and so copyright, which expires 70 years after the writer's death, has to be cleared before CELT may use the translation. In the meantime, English translations of some texts are also available on other Internet websites hosted in countries where copyright expires after 50 years.
Q. I am interested in the Latin texts. What about them?
A.There are various collections of Latin texts covering Early Christian Literature available on CD-ROM; but we are aware these may be expensive commercial products and unavailable for consultation outside Research Libraries. We will publish more Latin source texts, such as Annals and Early Christian writings, from time to time, workload permitting. In this area, the collaboration of other scholars in the field is especially welcome.
Q. Do you also have translations into other European languages?
A.Yes, there is a limited number of translations by Rudolf Thurneysen into German; and there are two texts with a French translation by Georges Dottin. We would like to hear your views. Would you like to have translations into other languages than English? Please bear in mind that we do not produce the translations ourselves, but use existing ones.
Q. I am researching the family name XYZ. Do you have any information about XYZ?
A. Unfortunately we are not in a position to carry out genealogical inquiries on behalf of members of the public. If you would like to enlist professional help, please refer to the website of the National Library of Ireland, or in Northern Ireland, you can find addresses on the website of the Public Records Office of Northern Ireland.
Q. Some of the bibliographic information appears to be missing.
A.The bibliographies are intended to provide users with further reading, and do not claim to be complete. As we continue to publish more texts, we are busy creating bibliographies for them. For the most popular Anglo-Irish writers, often there are also comprehensive online bibliographies available. For those readers interested in obtaining more up-to-date bibliographical information, links to Celtic Journals, the CSANA database and the very useful and up-to-date Bibliography of the Royal Historical Society in the UK are provided on the resources page.
Q. There appear to be errors in the texts, or they do not display properly.
A. There are several reasons for this: there are errors in the original text: if we are not creating a new edition, then the errors of the original are retained. Sometimes what appears to be an error is not but could be, e.g., an archaic form or usage, or an idiosyncratic usage by the author. Each text is individual; each text is initially marked-up in XML/SGML; it is then converted to HTML for use in web browsers.
Of course, there could be an error we have overlooked, too. In this case, please contact us. Conversion will not always be perfect, at least not the first time. We endeavour to correct display errors as soon as possible. Some browsers do not display full character sets—different characters like f and f with an overdot, are both displayed as f in the HTML file. By going back to the XML/SGML file, you can always check the underlying character. Another reason for characters not being displayed properly could be a browser that is not configured correctly: see our test page to check how your browser displays accented characters.
Q. What are the technical requirements for the site?
A. To use framed texts, you need a frames capable browser such as the latest versions of MS Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator, Opera, or the very neat Firefox. However, surfers without frames capable browsers, can click on the link "The CELT edition as a single file". For SGML/XML versions of the texts, see the next question. The site works at all resolutions, but best at a resolution of at least 800x600 with 16 bit colour.
Q. Can I view SGML/XML texts in a browser?
A. SGML and XML texts (with extension .sgm or .sgml, or .xml) are best viewed in an SGML/XML-enabled browser. A shareware SGML/XML-browser free for personal use, with no guarantees is DocZilla. SGML and XML texts can also be viewed using a plain-text editor. This lets you see the mark-up too. One powerful shareware plain-text editor is the very neat EditPadLite (available for Windows and Linux). WordPerfect 9 comes with a full SGML editor and thus can display SGML files with ease. Microsoft Word recognizes XML, but will only open perfect files. Open Office can display XML files with no problems.
If you want to view SGML/XML files and have difficulty to do so, please email the Project Manager, Beatrix Färber (b.faerber(at)ucc.ie). For those users who do not want to view the XML/SGML master files with their sometimes complex encoding, texts are provided in HTML format.
There is a free XML browser available from Microsoft at this URL. It requires installation of .net framework 2.0 and the use of Internet Explorer as your browser.
Q. Why do you use XML/SGML and not just HTML to encode texts?
A. HTML does not possess sufficient capability to represent adequately all the various nuances of mark-up which are encoded in the original copies. The Extensible Markup Language can be used in conjunction with TEI (Text Encoding Initiative) guidelines to mark-up complex texts (prosimetrum, critical apparatus, dictionaries, etc.) in various languages. HTML is just a posting-stage in browser technology whilst XML and SGML are heavily used by corporations and academic projects to encode large amounts of material. SGML has been adopted by the European Commission as the standard in which to store all its information.
Q. How do you convert the SGML to HTML?
A. Using OmniMark, the texts are converted from SGML to HTML. For how SGML mark-up and diacritics are represented in HTML see our methodology page.
Q. What about the copyright of CELT texts?
A. All the texts can be searched, read on screen, downloaded for later use, or printed out for *private* use and research. If you use our texts in your research, please credit us in your published results (e.g. conference paper, journal article, on the web or in a monograph). Links can be made from other websites to CELT, but please do not download our texts and make them available on your server. We usually contact copyright holders of the texts we use and ask them for permission. If we have inadvertently published a text still in copyright, please contact us so that appropriate arrangements can be made.
Q. What stages are involved in a textual project?
A.The copyright status for materials in the CELT collection is checked and clearance sought. The files are scanned from the hardcopy or photocopies, proofed twice against the originals, and structurally encoded in SGML. Content markup may be added, depending on the source language and kind of file. Usually, Irish language files contain more content markup than their English translations to avoid duplication of work. A bibliography is compiled for each text, the SGML files are parsed using NSGMLS to ensure consistency of mark-up, converted to HTML and published to the Internet. They might finally be spot-checked for errors again as necessary. Click here to see how texts are made available. The methodology of the markup can be seen here
字顺( Alphabetical List of Journals):
