New digital access to articles in the Book of the Old Edinburgh Club
We have made it easier to find content in the Book of the Old Edinburgh Club (BOEC) that interests you and have released over 60 articles never published online before. This will benefit researchers from the city and across the world.
Improving 'searchability'
Part of the purpose of the Old Edinburgh Club is to improve access to historical sources but we have not done enough to facilitate searching the rich content of the Book. We have scanned back copies – yes – but most are large and unwieldy PDFs of whole volumes, up to 50 megabytes in size, and all have lacked metadata to help search engines help you.
Our ‘BOEC Search’ project has involved using PDF software to split the issues into individual articles and generate citations and metadata with the help of AI, using ChatGPT. Our Jean Butchart Bursar, Amanda Ramsey has done a remarkable job in undertaking this for 35 volumes and over 250 articles in the first existence of the Book of the Old Edinburgh Club and adding cover pages for each article. Then there were 19 volumes and 157 articles in the ‘New Series’ which needed metadata and cover pages. We had to work to get the optimum prompt for ChatGPT, and quite a bit of editing was needed in the earlier stages. There was a tendency to overblow an article’s contribution to the study of Edinburgh history and some ‘hallucinations’ (invented content) appeared! Undoubtedly, however, ChatGPT speeded the process.
We have improved the search function on our site (powered by Google). You should now find that when you do a search on our website that you are presented with a more targeted set of links.
Please note that we continue to make full copies of the Original Series volumes available, as these are helpful for use in conjunction with the indexes published for volumes 1 to 21 (1908-1936) and 22 to 35 (1938-1981). In consequence, you will find that search returns provide links both to the individual article and to its volume.
Release of online articles
We have just released in digital form over 60 articles published between 2010 and 2019 and not previously available online. Prominent topics include the Scottish Enlightenment, urban planning and development, architecture, gardens, horticulture and public health. Volume 8 (2010) was a special issue celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Old Edinburgh Club. Social history features with coverage of Edinburgh’s suffragists, the Edinburgh Voluntary Organisations’ Council and public washhouses. Several authors such as David McCrone and Iain Gordon Brown have since published books which develop their BOEC articles.
You will find these articles available for download on our main ‘New Series’ Contents page.
Our plans
Our plans include ensuring that research tools such as Google Scholar and bibliographic databases pick up the BOEC articles and making volumes 16 to 19 (2020 to 2023) available online to our members only.
We shall also do more to draw attention to past articles on our website and on social media.
