Talk:Star of the West

I remember that there were 25 volumes of Star of the West--how about reflecting that on the table of contents page? (Btw, still have the first 4 issues from volume 2 to port over from http://bahai-library.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1460&sid=513af0525144fdfa93bc1d73df943b4a&start=26 ) Brettz9 17:45, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

Are you serious, there are 25 volumes? GR's reprint covers only 14 and that's like 4,000 pages already. Btw, in the reprint it says that the character and name of the magazine started to change in 1924 (volume 14) from Star of the West to The Baha'i Magazine. Do you know about this? David 13:50, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Yes, 25. I remember the SoW CD-ROM said they scanned 8,500 pages, so that would make sense. I'm not sure about/why the name changed ('Abdu'l-Baha Himself advised use of the name "Star of the West" as I recall, which is maybe the reason for the first name change). Brettz9 00:05, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

This project is going to take the rest of my life... David 06:08, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

My friend Kam said he was planning to still get back to you (and maybe use my help to get started). He is even more interested after I shared info with him on TEI too (as the work might be used by the official project in the future), so you may have one helpful volunteer there. I also would like to do some occasional work on it, though I'd need to get the scans and OCR since I can't find my Star of the West CD-ROM. So, there may be 2 volunteers available for you. Even if it does take our whole life, it's still doing something about the issue; more praiseworthy even, I'd imagine, then just throwing our hands up because we couldn't be the ones to finish it. (Besides that, it's fun to read it.) However, I think once people see the progress, they may be more encouraged to help out. (So maybe it is a good idea NOT to list all 25 volumes on the page yet.) Though maybe we can start a pledge drive where people promise to proofread one article if others (maybe 400?) will too, so everyone feels like their contribution is particularly important toward completing the work. FYI, as I recall volumes 13-25 were usually broken up into 12 or 13 issues (instead of 19), though they were much longer and more info was on a page.) Brettz9 07:45, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

To add to my comment above just now, I think Facebook is a great way to inform our friends, and I think I can ask my Baha'i friends, and ask them to ask their friends, as soon as we can get more scans online so there is an easy way for us to do the work. It's a pity if the Star of the West CD-ROM images couldn't be used, since the scanning work (and the older-OCR work) is already done. So, let me know if there start to be many scans online. Brettz9 07:49, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

Definitely I think it's worth it, and thank you for your support. I'm finished scanning 7 of the 8 books I have available to me and I'll begin uploading them once I can get more regular internet access. Is there any chance you can find your CD-ROM again?

The odd thing is that I found it and lost it again... I really have looked a number of places without finding it. Argh!!!

Do you know where they got access to the other 4,500 pages to scan them? David 01:02, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

It's possible they were found at the National Baha'i Center in Wilmette, though a number of local communities in the U.S. also have some copies. Maybe your national center has or could get some copies as you would of course be providing a great service...

By the way, I just finished adding the articles (vol 1 (all), and vol 2, articles 1-4) which I had already proofread, though no doubt the formatting can use some improvement.

You did a fabulous job of formatting the first article... But would you mind adding page numbers to it with anchors (or at least anchors)? I think it is very useful for us to be able to point people to a specific page, including within citations in our own wikis, particularly Bahai9 where we constantly make citations. (And I think visible page numbers can help people know the right boundaries of where to look when they are linked to a particular page...If we don't want them to show up for style reasons, a script can be designed which allows one to click to hide them or make them inline, etc.) There's an error currently at http://bahai-library.com/?file=abdulbaha_star_west_1 so I can't check there now...

Also, FYI, I had done a page count earlier, so I can just offer this information:

I did page counts per issue for volumes 2 and 3, but just did a per-volume total afterward. The items in parentheses (starting at volume 15) are the number of index pages

As of volume 2, issue 5 therefore (which is where I left off), there should be: 8047 pages left (just discovered I apparently had finished issue 5 and just posted it, so maybe can subtract 24 from that)

1 - (hadn't counted since I had already finished, but it looks from http://bahai-library.com/?file=abdulbaha_star_west_1 like 20+14+20+30+16*3+24+20+16*3+20+16*3+24+16+52=== 384) 2 - 5 (24), 6(8), 7(32), 8(16), 9(16), 10(16), 11(12), 12(24), 13(16), 14(16), 15(16), 16(8), 17(32), 18(16) === 252 3 - 1-2 (16 each), 3 (46), 4 (32), 5-6 (8 each), 7 (32), 8 (32), 9 (16), 10 (32), 11-19 (16 each) === 270 4 - 328 5 - 304 6 - 168 7 - 196 8 - 244 9 - 232 10 - 356 11 - 344 12 - 320 13 - 352 14 - 384 15+16 - 754 (6) (splits at page 377) 17 - 392 (7) 18 - 388 (6) 19 - 384 (6) 20 - 384 (6) 21 - 384 (6) 22 - 383 (7) 23 - 388 (7) 24 - 390 25 - 392 (7)

Persian pages

Is it ok if we at least put place-holders for the Persian pages? I think it is important to know that pages are there, and eventually put scans of them if not text also... Brettz9 04:23, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

no way to use Sifter as a starting point?

It was commercial, not sure still available. But at least it did the initial OCR. Smkolins 14:55, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Hi Smkolins, because it was released as a for-profit venture I didn't feel comfortable using its copy of the text, though it would have certainly been nice. David 00:58, 14 September 2011 (UTC)