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Blandings Yahoo Group

Annotations Project FAQ

Updated 21 March 2004
The latest version of this document can be found in the Annotations folder of the Blandings Group
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/blandings/files/Annotations/

1. General  
2. Practical  
3. The Annotations Database  

1. General

What is the Annotations project?

It is a project by members of the Blandings group to document literary and cultural allusions in the works of P.G. Wodehouse.

What is the difference between Annotations and Readers' Guides?

The Readers' Guides are intended as quick-reference resources listing the characters and locations of the different books and stories; the annotations take a more detailed look at the actual texts, explaining points which are not obvious.

Where can I find the completed annotations?

In the Annotations folder of the Files section of  the Blandings Yahoo site.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/blandings/files/Annotations/
You will need a Yahoo ID to log into the site, if you don't already have one.

Can I look at the annotations in progress?

You can search most of the current annotations using the online Annotations Database. See below for more details on how to use this.

Who is involved?

Any member of the Blandings group is welcome to take part. Four or five people have been heavily involved in the project up to now, but many others regularly contribute to the annotations in group discussions. The intention is that the work should involve as many people as possible: the final result is always a group effort.

Why are we doing this?

A century after Wodehouse's first books appeared, there are a lot of references in the text which would have been part of the everyday knowledge of his readers, but which are now becoming obscure. We hope the annotations project will serve as a repository of  knowledge to keep Wodehouse texts accessible to future generations.
The results are interesting in themselves: by looking closely at the allusions and references in the books, you can learn a lot about Wodehouse and the way he worked. But many of us feel that the process itself, the fun of chasing that elusive song title or bit of slang, is what makes it worthwhile.

How far have we got?

So far about fifteen books have been annotated. That leaves at least eighty for you to have a go at...

How do I know who is working on which book?

Have a look at the Annotations Progress table in the Databases section of the Blandings Yahoo site.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/blandings/database

2. Practical

How can I become an annotator?

Essentially, all you have to do is choose a book, let  the group know what you're doing, and get cracking. If you post your results and queries in the group, others will certainly offer help and advice. Look at the existing annotations to see what's involved.

How do I choose a book?

Obviously, the first thing is to have access to a copy of the book. Have a look in the Annotations table in the Databases section of the Blandings Yahoo site to see if anyone is already doing that book. If someone else is already busy with the book you're interested in, get in touch with that person via the group and offer to help. Otherwise, if the book you are interested in is not in the list, add a record to the table with the details to register your interest. If in doubt, ask for advice in the group.

What else do I need?

The only essentials are time and access to a computer with an internet connection. How much time you need is up to you - you can aim to finish a book in a couple of weeks, or you can do a chapter a month (or even less).

How do I create the annotations?

You can create your notes with any convenient tool, provided that you can make them into a plain text (ASCII) or html file to upload them to the Annotations folder. Some people type their notes directly into a text editor, others use a word processor that can export html. To share your work most effectively, the recommended method is to add your annotations directly to the Annotations Database .

How can I share the annotations with the group?

It's a good idea to post or upload a draft version to the group at an early stage, and ask for comments, corrections and additions. Annotations should be uploaded to subfolders of the Annotations folder in the Files section of the Blandings site. You will need to make a folder for your book. In most cases, the notes for one book are a bit too long to be read comfortably in one file, so you may prefer to divide it up into three or four parts. For short stories, it is preferable to have a separate file for each story.

What should I annotate?

There is no hard-and-fast rule: the general principle is to annotate those points in the text which are likely to be obscure to at least some readers, or where you can add useful information that is not immediately obvious. Remember that Wodehouse readers don't necessarily have personal experience of Britain or the USA, so things that are obvious to you might still be obscure to many others.
If you do have to annotate something that will be blindingly obvious to 95% of readers, try to add some relevant information (not: "Paris - Large French city" but rather: "Paris - Wodehouse lived in the French capital for a while in 1945").
Some non-limiting examples:

• names of characters and locations: where did Wodehouse get them from? Is there a Wodehouse connection with any place names he uses?
• references to real people and places, or topical events - who or what were they?
• references to books, films, plays, etc. - are they real or fictitious?
• quotations and literary allusions - sometimes obvious, sometimes concealed in the text and difficult to spot. Even if the source is well-known, it can be interesting to put the quoted lines in context.
• period details: What do Old Etonian spats look like?
• chronology - how does a reference relate in time to the date when the book was written?

What information should I include?

Have a look at existing annotations files to see the layouts people have used. For each note, you should have as a minimum the book and chapter or story, a headword or phrase, a page reference to the edition you are using, and the notes themselves. Even if others use different editions, the page numbers are helpful for keeping track of how far through the chapter a phrase appears. It is useful to list the range of page numbers covered by each chapter or story.

Where can I find information?

Many questions can be answered using freely-available internet search tools like Google. A very useful resource is Bartleby, which has searchable texts of many of the reference books Wodehouse used himself (especially Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, the King James Bible, the Oxford Shakespeare, and the Oxford Book of English Verse). You can find other useful addresses in the Links section of the Blandings site.
It is handy to have access to one or two Wodehouse biographies and Prof. Garrison's Who's Who in Wodehouse, but if you don't have these, just post questions to the group. A good dictionary is also useful.

What about copyright issues?

Please avoid quoting copyright material in the annotations.  In particular, keep quotations from Wodehouse himself as short as possible. There is no need to reproduce whole sentences as headwords to indicate what you are annotating - the annotations will only be used alongside the paper text, and often it is enough just to cite the most important words.

3. The Annotations Database

What is the Annotations Database?

The Annotations Database is an online database that contains most of the results of our research so far, in a structured, searchable form. You can find it at http://www.markhodson.nl/PGWBase

3.1 Accessing the Database

Who can use the Annotations Database?

Access is open to any member of the Blandings Group. The current userid and password will be published from time to time in the group.

Why do I have to have a userid?

• Firstly, because the database contains the results of many hours of hard work by members of the group, and we'd like to keep some control over the way it is used.
• Secondly, because the database is maintained by a member of the group at his own expense, and bandwidth costs money!
• Anyone with a serious (or not-so-serious) interest in P.G. Wodehouse is welcome to join the group and will then have access to the database.

Can I add or edit annotations?

Yes - if you're interested in contributing, please ask for your own userid and password with editor privileges. All you need is an internet connection and a normal web browser. You may need to enable cookies to get the logon to work.

3.2 General Use

How do I display all the annotations for a book?

• Go to the Books screen, and look for the book you are interested in. You can sort the itens in the table by clicking on the column headers, or you can search for words within the books table using the box at the top of the screen. If you click on the title of the book, you will see a list of annotations for that book.
• Alternatively, from the Notes screen, click on Search Notes, and you will see a search screen where you can select the book and optionally the chapter or story you are interested in.
• NB: if you are looking for a book by the US title, you will have to do it from the Bookstable.

How do I display all the annotations for a story?

• Go to the Stories screen, and look for the book you are interested in. You can sort the itens in the table by clicking on the column headers, or you can search for words within the Stories table using the box at the top of the screen. If you click on the title of the story, you will see a list of annotations for that book.
• Alternatively, from the Notes screen, click on Search Notes, and you will see a search screen where you can select the story you are interested in.

How can I find all annotations containing a given word or phrase?

From the Notes screen, click on Search Notes, and type a word or phrase into the Text box. Leave the other boxes unchanged unless you want to limit your search to a particular book, chapter or story.

3.3 Structure

What are the various fields used for?

There are four main tables in the database:

• Books - a list of Wodehouse's books, with basic bibliographic data for each.
• Stories - a list of short stories, with information about their first serial publication and the books they appear in
• Notes - the actual annotations
• Citations - passages from other authors (popular songs, poems, the Bible, Shakespeare, etc.) that Wodehouse quotes or alludes to in the text. Because the same items come up over and over again, they are stored separately from the annotations themselves.

In the Notes table (NB: some of these fields are only visible in the edit view):

• UK Book title, Story Title, Chapter, Pt., and Page are used to identify the location of the passage being annotated. These fields are condensed into one in the general listing.
• Sortindex is a number between 0 and 9 used to fix the order in which the records are listed. In the general view, records are sorted by book and by page, then by Sortindex; you only need to change Sortindex if you have more than one annotation on the same page of a given book.
• Headwords - the actual text in the book that you are annotating. To avoid copyright problems, keep these to the minimum needed to identify the passage.
• Text1 - The main text of your annotation. You can add up to 64kB of text to each record (though normally you will need far less!)
• Keywords - if you want, you can add words here to help retrieve this record in a text search.
• CitID - This is a link to the Citations table.
• Source - Here you can add a reference to your source for the information in the note (
• Web Links - These two fields can each contain a link to a relevant web page where there's more information on this subject.
• Created By - the person who added this note
• Comments - a space for other annotators to add their remarks

3.4 Limitations

What are the limitations of the database?

• The information has been gathered from work done at different times, by different people, and in different formats. Not all of it fits neatly into the pattern of database fields, and some records may have been corrupted by the conversion process. If in doubt, look at the annotations files in the Blandings Group files section to see the original.
• The web interface to the database is still being developed, and some parts may not work as you would expect.
• Usernames and dates of annotations should fill themselves in automatically: this isn't working at the moment
• Working with citations is not very straightforward. The easiest way is:
• keep both the Notes table and the Citations table open in separate browser windows (the tabs in Mozilla are very handy for this sort of thing).
• When you want to add a citation to a note, do a search in Citations to see if it already exists.
• If it does, make a note of the CITID number.
• If not, create a new citation with a new ID number (sorry, this should be automatic, but it isn't working properly yet). Fill in the citation text and other details and save it, noting the CITID number.
• Enter the CITID number into the CITID box of the Note.

© Blandings Annotations Project 2004