Work on the statutes project in December 2016:
Not much accomplished this month, given the seasonal festivities. However:
0: On a whim I have OCR’d the 12 volumes collecting the statutes of Ireland, 1310 – 1800. The raw and very messy OCR can be found on Github. As with many of these retrospective collections, they are far from complete, neglecting statutes expired or repealed. I have not decided what to do with them, given that the English / British statutes take priority, and are daunting enough a task alone, but I will probably be producing corrected versions of legislation dealing with debt, as and when I need them. After the Union of 1800, Irish legislation is to be found in the main body of United Kingdom law.
1: Added to the general collection of statutes gathered from around the internet: the infamous ‘Cat and Mouse’ act of 1913, used against imprisoned Suffragette hunger-strikers.
On the to do list for January: thinking about automatic correction of OCR’d text, using titles of statutes as metadata, and hopefully some long overdue blog posts.