Help:Facsimiles

Reprints and facsimile editions of works have been popular since around the late 19th century. We certainly want to keep these reprinted editions, since they can help to give readers an accurate timeline of a work's publication and printing history with evidence. But we want to ensure that we prevent redundant editing of pages with the same content, so we somewhat modify our normal procedure for these reprint editions.

Handling facsimile pages

In the Page namespace, a facsimile page should redirect to the original page it is facsimiled from. For example, for the work The Star in the Window (1918), the first page of the Grosset & Dunlap reprint redirects to the first page of the original Frederick A. Stokes Company edition.

Below the redirect code, the template {{Facsimile page}} should be added so that other editors know why the page is redirected.

The page status "Without text" (#0, gray) should be used for facsimile pages, since these pages do not need to be proofread or validated. Even the header and footer should ideally be blank.

Ultimately, you will end up with a facsimile page that looks like this:

#REDIRECT [[Page:The Star in the Window.pdf/11]]
{{facsimile page}}

Transclusion

Transclusion conveniently works exactly the same way as usual. The redirects will still show the content exactly the same as if the pages were proofread, see The Star in the Window (Grosset & Dunlap)/Chapter 1 as an example.

A work that is a facsimile edition should be included in Category:Facsimile editions of works.

Hierarchy of editions

If an earlier print of the same work is ever found after a reprint was worked on first, it would be ideal to move the proofread content from the reprint to this earlier edition. This would ensure that the redirections are handled chronologically.

Things to be careful of

In most facsimiles, the front matter content will be mostly the same as the original, and therefore should be redirected to the original front matter pages. But there will be a few pages that are not the same, such as the title page, cover, specific advertisements, or the copyright page. So, the different pages should still be proofread as normal, since they're different from the original.

The work should be reviewed before its pages are assumed to be facsimiled. Compare a fair sample of the pages to the original before making this assumption. Some editions are edited from the originals, even if slightly, or may have differing paginations. Compare for example the content of these two editions of Explorers of the Dawn (1922): the first page of the original edition, Feb. 1922, New York, to the first page of the first Cassell and Company edition, 1923, London.

Companies such as Grosset & Dunlap sometimes reprinted works with pages added, inserting for example new plates. Compare, for Stella Dallas (1923): the original 1923 edition, to the c. 1925 Grosset & Dunlap edition with stills from the film based on the novel added as new pages.

The practice of reprinting works verbatim was apparently uncommon before around 1885, so newer printings from before that time are more likely to have differences.

Known issues

• Pages that link within the work, for example a link to [[Work/Chapter 1|the first chapter of this book]] from a bit of the original page that said "the first chapter of this book", would still link to the original work and not automatically direct to that page in the facsimile.

• This is why tables of contents pages in facsimiles should (for now) be proofread separately, even if their textual content is exactly the same. However, for more minor in-text linking, this wouldn't matter so much.

• Style sheets cannot currently be redirected to point to the style sheet in the original index, so unfortunately have to be copied over manually for now. Example: 1926 vs. 1925
• The bar at the top-left of a transcluded chapter page, such as Thunder on the Left (1926)/Chapter 2, where all pages within are proofread and the redirects are marked as "without text", seems to show up as half-proofread half-no-text (half-yellow half-white).

See also

• Category:Facsimiles