Monday, August 18, 2008

Estern (for Eastern)

"East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet," according to Rudyard Kipling. This particular typo seems pretty straightforward - Estern for Eastern. Think again. What if somebody didn't hit the 'W' hard enough and this was the result for some poor soul who wanted to type 'Western.' The error is on the 'C' list of Typographical Errors in Library Databases, meaning that it was present from 8 to 15 times in OhioLINK at the time of its discovery. We checked that catalog today and found exactly 100 hits for the term, but most of them were in German. That is why our volunteers always limit to records in the English language. Because of the possible East/West confusion, it is more important than ever to check for context before attempting to correct a record with this error.
Today's photo shows the thriving boardwalk scene at Coney Island in Brooklyn, New York. The original is found at http://www.pbase.com/image/101838544

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