The E-Sylum:  Volume 9, Number 51, December 17, 2006, Article 33

DEAD PLAGIARISTS SOCIETY

"Dead Plagiarists Society", a November 21 article published on the
Slate web site asks, "Will Google Book Search uncover long-buried
literary crimes?"  As more and more texts (numismatic and otherwise)
migrate to electronic format, it's just a matter of time before
plagiarists, even long-dead ones, will finally be exposed.

"Given the popularity of plagiarism-seeking software services for
academics, it may be only a matter of time before some enterprising
scholar yokes Google Book Search and plagiarism-detection software
together into a massive literary dragnet, scooping out hundreds of
years' worth of plagiarists—giants and forgotten hacks alike—who
have all escaped detection until now.

"Google Book Search contains hundreds of millions of printed pages,
and yet after just a few words, the likelihood of the sentence's
replication scales down dramatically."

"Conveniently enough, a few literary greats have already had their
mug shots taken. It's long been known that Poe plagiarized an early
book, a hack project titled The Conchologist's First Book, and that
Herman Melville swiped many technical passages of Moby Dick whole
from maritime authors like Henry Cheever."

To read the complete article, see: Full Story

[This is a topic we've broached before in The E-Sylum, but it's not
much discussed in polite numismatic company.  Me plagiarize?  Heck
no - it's "research".  But more than a few numismatic authors have
copied from earlier works to varying degrees.  It will be interesting
to see who get ratted out by the computers.  -Editor]

  Wayne Homren, Editor

	coinbooks.org Web

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