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=This file (about 250 lines) contains general information about the =
=Oxford Text Archive, about how to get copies of its catalogue, and how=
=to get copies of the texts deposited there. =
= Last update: 26 Aug 92 =
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WHAT IS THE OXFORD TEXT ARCHIVE?
The Oxford Text Archive is a facility provided by Oxford
University Computing Services. It has no connexion with Oxford
University Press or any other commercial organisation and
exists to serve the interests of the academic community by
providing archival and dissemination facilities for
electronic texts at low cost.
The Archive offers scholars long term storage and
maintenance of their electronic texts free of charge. It
manages non-commercial distribution of electronic texts and
information about them on behalf of its depositors.
WHAT TEXTS DOES IT CONTAIN?
The Archive contains electronic versions of literary
works by many major authors in Greek, Latin, English and a
dozen or more other languages. It contains collections and
corpora of unpublished materials prepared by field workers in
linguistics. It contains electronic versions of some standard
reference works. It has copies of texts and corpora prepared
by individual scholars and major research projects worldwide.
The total size of the Archive exceeds a gigabyte and there
are about a thousand titles in its catalogue.
WHERE CAN I GET A CATALOGUE?
The Catalogue is available in paper form by post from the address
below. New editions are published at least twice a year. It is
also available in electronic form, either as a formatted file
for display at a terminal or in a tagged form using SGML. These
files are available from a number of different places under
various names...
(1) on the Oxford VAX Cluster as
OX$DOC:TEXTARCHIVE.LIST and OX$DOC:TEXTARCHIVE.SGML
(2) from various ListServers, e.g. LISTSERV@BROWNVM
(send the mail message GET HUMANIST FILELIST for details)
(3) by anonymous FTP from Internet site black.ox.ac.uk
(129.67.1.165) in the directory /ota
Wherever you are, you can send a note to
[email protected]
specifying which form you want.
WHAT ARE THE TEXTS LIKE?
Because the texts come from so many different sources,
they are held in many different formats. The texts also vary
greatly in their accuracy and the features which have been
encoded. Some have been proof read to a high standard, while
others may have come straight from an optical scanner, Some
have been extensively tagged with special purpose analytic
codes, and others simply designed to mimic the appearance of
the printed source. The Archive does not require texts to
conform to any standard of formatting or accuracy.
HOW USABLE ARE THE TEXTS?
Most of the texts can be used with commonly available
text indexing and concordancing software, or can easily be
converted for that purpose. All texts are held as `plain
ASCII' files on magnetic tape, with no special formatting
codes. Documentation of the coding scheme used in each text
is supplied with it, wherever possible.
WHAT ABOUT COPYRIGHT?
Many of the texts in the Archive are subject to some form
of copyright restriction. The Archive's obligations to its
depositors generally restrict use of the texts to private
study and research. In some cases, depositors have also
authorised use of the texts in teaching. In all cases, users
of the texts must agree not to use the texts commercially and
not to redistribute copies of them without consultation.
HOW DO I ACCESS THE TEXTS?
If you are a registered user of Oxford University Computing
Services (i.e. you have an account on OXFORD.VAX or black), just
send an e-mail message to the username ARCHIVE (on either
machine) specifying which texts you want to use and for what
purpose.
If you are not a registered OUCS user, you can access only
texts in categories P, U and A as described further below.
P category texts are in the public domain. No formality is
needed for these texts. They can be downloaded directly by
anonymous FTP, from black.ox.ac.uk or from other sites offering
this facility. At present, very few texts are in this category;
subject to agreement with our depositors we hope to increase the
number greatly in the future.
U and A texts are usually distributed on magnetic tape or
cartridge, though smaller texts can be sent on diskette. We will
also send copies to you via the network, if you send us the
required information (i.e. a secure account-name and password),
provided that this can be done with reasonable success. Where
copies are made on disk or tape, we make a small distribution
charge to cover media and postage which *must* be paid in
advance.
WHAT DO THE CODES IN THE CATALOGUE MEAN?
Each title in the list is preceded by a code made of of a
single letter indicating the availability of the text (U, A, P,
or X), in some cases followed by a star, a number identifying
the text and another single letter which gives some idea of
the size of the text.
Availability codes:
X Available only to registered OUCS users. May not be copied
U Freely available for scholarly use in private research.
U* Freely available for scholarly use in private research and also
for teaching purposes.
A Available for scholarly use, but only with written
authorisation from the depositor.
P Public domain text. Available without formality to anyone.
Size codes: A Size less than 512 Kb
B Size between 512 Kb and 1 Mb
C Size between 1 and 2 Mb
D Size between 2 and 5 Mb
E Size greater than 5 Mb
Depending on format, a standard 600 foot magnetic tape
will hold up to 50 texts of size category A. Most texts of
size code A will fit on a standard double density floppy
diskette; any text of size code A or B will fit on a standard
high density diskette.
WHAT DO I DO TO ORDER A COPY OF A TEXT?
Texts with availability code P may be downloaded directly,
either from our anonymous FTP server at black.ox.ac.uk
[129.67.1.165] or from other FTP servers on the InterNet. For
more information on using FTP, please contact your local
computing service.
For all other texts, you must complete and return the following
proforma. For texts with availability code U, the only
authorisation needed is your signature on the Order Form. For A
category texts, you must also provide written authorisation from
the depositor of the text; you should therefore ask us for
depositor details before ordering. All orders must be prepaid to
the account of Oxford University Computing Service, in sterling
or in US dollars. We cannot issue invoices, and any orders which
are not prepaid or not submitted on the standard order form will
be ignored.
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Oxford Text Archive email ARCHIVE @ UK.Ac.Oxford.VAX
OUCS, 13 Banbury Road voice +44 (865) 273 238
Oxford OX2 6NN, UK fax +44 (865) 273 275
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OXFORD TEXT ARCHIVE OFFICIAL ORDER FORM
*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*
* Hardcopy of this form must be returned, duly completed, to *
* Oxford Text Archive *
* 13 Banbury Road *
* Oxford OX2 6NN *
* UK *
* NB The whole of this document must be returned IN HARDCOPY *
* All relevant parts of the form must be completed *
* Payment must accompany the order *
* Forms returned electronically will be ignored *
*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*
SECTION ONE: User Declaration
Please sign the following, in the place indicated:
In consideration of The Oxford Archive agreeing to supply me
certain texts in machine-readable form together with supporting
documentation as listed in Part Two below, hereinafter called
'the texts', I hereby undertake:-
(1) To use the texts for purposes of private scholarly research
only and not for profit (this shall not preclude the
publication in a scholarly context of analyses or
interpretations derived from the texts). To use and make
available to others for educational purposes only texts
specifically designated as `available for teaching purposes'.
(2) To acknowledge in any work, published or unpublished, based
in whole or in part on analyses made of the texts both the
original depositors and the Archive.
(3) Not to copy in whole or in part the text, except insofaras
this may be necessary for security purposes or for my own
personal use. Not to distribute the text to third parties,
nor to publish or reproduce it in anyway, except for teaching
purposes, where so permitted. Copyright of all
machine-readable texts issued by the Archive is reserved to the
Depositors.
(4) To give access to the text only to persons directly
associated with me or working under my control and to
require of such persons signed undertakings neither to use
the text except in connexion with my academic purposes nor
to give access to the text to others; these signed
undertakings to be made available to the Archive on request.
(5) Not to hold the Archive liable for any errors of
transcription which may be found in the texts, but to notify
the Archive of such errors wherever possible.
(6) To pay such charges as the Archive may determine from time to
time to cover the cost of supplying the texts.
SIGNATURE : [ ]
DATE : [ ]
PART TWO: Texts Required
Please enter for each text the NUMBER and SHORT TITLE, as given
in the current Archive Shortlist
number Short title
[ ][ ]
[ ][ ]
[ ][ ]
[ ][ ]
[ ][ ]
[ ][ ]
[ ][ ]
[ ][ ]
[ ][ ]
NOTE: Only texts with an availability code of P, U or A may be
ordered. Texts with Availability Code of A may be included in
this list only if authorisation from the depositor accompanies
this form. Depositor details are available on demand.
[This page may be copied as necessary]
SECTION THREE: Order Details
-------------------------Return Address-------------------------
Name
Institution
Department
Street
Post town Post code
Country (if not UK)
Electronic mail address
---------------------Format Required-------------------------
Texts may be supplied on Magnetic Tape, Diskette or Data Cartridge.
Texts may also be transferred over the network.
Pricing is different for each format. Use tape if you are ordering
more than a megabyte or so of data.
Please complete ONE of the following sections A, B, C or D
A-------------------Texts required on TAPE-------------------------
For each heading below, please circle or tick ONE choice only
Tape density: 1600 or 6250
Tape format: ASCII or EBCDIC
Labelled or Unlabelled
Fixed or Variable length
Number of texts ordered [ ] @ 5 (pounds)
Number of tapes required [ ] @ 15 (within Europe)
[ ] @ 25 (outside Europe)
B-------------------Texts Required on Diskette------------------
DD (360/720 Kb) or HD (1.2/1.4 Mb)
MS/DOS or Macintosh
3.5" or 5.25
Number of diskettes: [ ] @ 15 (pounds)
C-------------------Texts Required on Data Cartridge--------------
DC300, TAR format only
Number of cartridges: [ ] @ 30 (pounds)
D-------------------Texts Required via network--------------
Network: JANET InterNet (tick one)
Account-name:
Password:
This account is under my personal control. I undertake to
ensure security of the text stored here, in particular to
ensure that others do not have access to it.
Signature:
At present, there is no charge for texts supplied over the network.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
TOTAL SUM ENCLOSED [ ] (pounds)
Payments in US Dollars should be converted at $2 = 1 pound
--------------------For Text Archive Use Only-------------------
Order number [ ] Received [ ]
Processed [ ] Despatched [ ]
*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*
* Hardcopy of this form must be returned, duly completed, to *
* Oxford Text Archive *
* 13 Banbury Road *
* Oxford OX2 6NN *
* UK *
* NB The whole of this document must be returned IN HARDCOPY *
* All relevant parts of the form must be completed *
* Payment must accompany the order *
* Forms returned electronically will be ignored *
* *
*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*
