Skip to main content

Scans & Print

Every digital entry is backed by the original printed page. The S link on each front-page dictionary row opens that dictionary's scanned edition.

Why scans matter​

  • Verification — the digital text is a transcription; the scan is the authority. When the digital text and the scan disagree, the scan wins (and the digital text is corrected — see Contributing).
  • Link targets — citations inside entries (<ls> tags) can be linked to the exact scanned page they reference. This "Dictionary to Book" linking is a major editorial workstream; see Issue Taxonomy.

Scan quality​

Some pages are blurry, skewed, or missing. Replacing them is tracked as a scan-quality task in the issue taxonomy. If you spot a bad scan, that is exactly the kind of issue worth reporting — see Contributing → Overview.

Where the digital edition intentionally diverges from the scanned print (e.g. an obvious typesetter's error in the original), the deviation is recorded in a printchange.txt file rather than silently changed. This keeps the digital text faithful to the print while documenting every editorial decision.

Scan URL pattern​

For a dictionary with scan code {CODE}, the scanned edition is at:

  • PDF: /scans/{CODE}Scan/index.php?sfx=pdf
  • JPG: /scans/{CODE}Scan/index.php?sfx=jpg

(These are the S¹ / S² links on the front page.) Per-dictionary availability is reflected live in the catalog.