2 — Friday, January 30, 2015
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
News

THREE THINGS YOU 
SHOULD KNOW TODAY

 The Michigan women’s 
basketball 
team 
fell 

to No. 5 Maryland on 

Thursday night, 91-65. And on 
the men’s side, senior forward 
Max Bielfeldt has adapted 
well to his newfound respon-
sibilites as a team leader. 
>> FOR MORE, SEE SPORTS PAGE 8

2

CAMPUS EVENTS & NOTES

Dartmouth 
College 

President Phil Hanlon 
announced a university-

wide ban on hard alcohol, a 
mandatory four-year sexual 
violence prevention program 
and a code of conduct that will 
take effect the spring term, 
The Dartmouth reported.

1

TUESDAY:

Campus Voices

THURSDAY:
Twitter Talk

FRIDAY:

Photos of the Week

WEDNESDAY:

In Other Ivory Towers

MONDAY:

This Week in History

LEFT LSA junior Randal Smith models at the ninth annual EnspiRED fashion show at the Biomedical Science and Research Building on 
Saturday. (Robert Dunne/Daily)
RIGHT Rackham student Rohan Moraikar and University alum Gary Ciarkowski train in the ancient Japanese martial art form of Bujinkan 
Budo as part of the Michigan Ninjutsu Club at the IM Building on Wednesday. (Andrew Cohen/Daily)

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A natural gas explosion 
occurred 
near 
a 

maternity 
hospital 

in Mexico City Thursday, 
injuring more than 60 people 
and killing at least two. An 
unknwon number of people 
are also still trapped in the 
debris, CNN reported.

3

Dean and Charlie strug-

gle with their dark sides in 
“No place like home.” The 
week’s episode begins in 
media res. A man, who has 
been beaten and tied up, 
runs from his attacker in a 
suburban neighborhood. 

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More Photos of the 
Week online

THE FILTER

The series, which expe-

rienced an unprecedented 
growth in ratings in its first 
three weeks on the air, got 
a preliminary tune-in from 
11.3 million viewers and 4.3 
percent of the 18-49 demo-
graphic to tune in.

Supernatural 
episode recap

BY KIM BATCHELOR

THE FILTER

Science & 
symphony 

WHAT: Alum José 
Francisco Salgado will speak 
about his collaboration with 
orchestras, composers, and 
chamber musicians for his 
visuals about the universe.
WHO: Department of 
Astronomy 
WHEN: Today at 7 p.m. 
WHERE: Alumni Center

Life writing 

WHAT: This conference 
will explore the ways in 
which writing about the self 
(“life writing”) has evolved 
in the digital age, with a 
focus on gender and race.
WHO: Institute for 
Research on Women 
and Gender
WHEN: Today from 
9 a.m. to 3 p.m.
WHERE: Lane Hall

Tobacco in 
India

WHAT: Dr. Ritesh Mistry 
will speak about adolescent 
tobacco use in India.
WHO: Center for South 
Asian Studies
WHEN: Today from 4 p.m. 
to 6 p.m.
WHERE: School of Social 
Work Building
l Please report any 
error in the Daily 
to corrections@
michigandaily.com.

‘Absent Matter’

WHAT: This workshop 
will explore the challenge 
historians facewhen dealing 
with questions of absence 
and erasure, and will feature 
a number of professors 
participating in a panel 
discussion. This event will 
be open to the general public, 
as well.
WHO: Eisenberg Institute 
for Historical Studies
WHEN: Today from 12 
p.m. to 2 p.m.
WHERE: Tisch Hall

Ecology lecture

WHAT: Prof. Peter Levi of 
the University of Wisconsin 
will present the results of 
his efforts to evaluate the 
effectiveness of stream 
restoration and ecological 
state in urban watersheds 
near Milwaukee, WI.
WHO: Cooperative 
Institure for Limnology and 
Ecosystems Research
WHEN: Today at 3:30 p.m.
WHERE: Dana Natural 
Resources Building

‘Fury’ screening

WHAT: M-Flicks will 
present a free screening 
of the new movie ‘Fury,’ 
starring Brad Pitt. The event 
will be open to the general 
public.
WHO: M-Flicks/ 
Undergraduate Activities 
Center
WHEN: Today at 7 p.m.
WHERE: Natural Science 
Auditorium

Foreclosure hearings draw 
many Detroit homeowners 

University leads effort to digitize 
thousands of Old English texts

Project aims to add 
40,000 more works 
to online archive by 

the year 2020

BY NABEEL CHOLLAMPAT

Daily Staff Reporter

After a 16-year University-

led effort, the earliest printed 
texts of modern era writers 
will now be available online 
and for free.

The University Library, the 

University of Oxford’s Bodle-
ian Libraries and the company 
ProQuest have collaborated to 
make more than 25,000 texts 
printed between 1473 to 1700 
available through the Univer-
sity of Michigan library’s web-
site.

According to a press release, 

this effort is only the first 
phase of the Early English 
Books Online Text Creation 

Partnership, which began in 
1999.

In an interview Thursday, 

Aaron McCollough, editorial 
director for Michigan Publish-
ing, said the texts that will be 
available include Shakespeare, 
Chaucer and Homer.

“The 
selection 
process 

focused on books that were 
already believed to be very 
important, for which high 
demand would exist,” McCol-
lough said. “The works of 
famous 
17th 
century 
play-

wrights, prominent philoso-
phers, 
sermon 
literature 

—there are around 25,000 of 
the ‘Greatest Hits,’ in a way, of 
the 17th century.”

ProQuest, an Ann Arbor-

based 
company, 
created 

scanned images of these texts 
in 1999 and published them as 
a database called Early English 
Books Online, but was unable 
to reproduce them into search-
able digital texts.

The entire effort across the 

libraries involved a process 
called double-keying, in which 
two different people type in, 
character by character, the let-
ters from the print documents. 
A program called optical char-
acter recognition can tran-
scribe modern printed works, 
but older texts contain dif-
ferent fonts that the program 
can’t recognize.

The Council on Library and 

Information Resources, Jisc, a 
digital solutions charity, and 
more than 160 other libraries 
also partnered in the project. 
McCollough said the interna-
tional collaboration is one of 
the first of its kind.

“It also is a kind of revolu-

tionary funding model for a big 
knowledge project in humani-
ties — this idea of (sic) consor-
tial collaboration, of multiple 
libraries contributing a feasi-
ble amount of money to a proj-
ect so that something is made 
possible that wouldn’t be pos-
sible for any single library to 
fund,” McCollough said. “That 
kind of model is being replicat-
ed in other contexts, but this 
is one of the first big projects 
like that.”

Overall, McCollough said 

the project will be vitally 
important for English culture 
as a whole.

“This was a very important 

thing in terms of free culture 
and preserving what is a fun-
damental set of texts in the 
history of English-language 
culture,” 
McCollough 
said. 

“It’s also a very large set of 
humanities data that can be 
mined and repurposed for dig-
ital humanities projects, and 
this is one of the great promis-
es of the material at this point: 
to see what scholars will do 
with these texts in the digital 
realm.”

The project hopes to release 

an additional 40,000 texts for 
public consumption by 2020.

Empire gains 
higher ratings

BY ALEX INTNER

Cobo Center 

conference room 
fills with hopeful 

citizens 

DETROIT (AP) — Hundreds 

of Detroit homeowners in dan-
ger of losing their properties 
flocked Thursday to hearings 
that offered a last-ditch chance 
to avoid foreclosure and to 
keep the houses from adding to 
the city’s already huge glut of 
vacant dwellings.

The 
homeowners 
nearly 

filled a long conference room 
in Detroit’s Cobo Center while 
waiting for their cases to be 
heard. Many hoped to work out 
payment plans to ease their tax 
debts under new laws signed 
this month by Republican Gov. 
Rick Snyder.

“Everybody does have a 

story. Most of them are prob-
ably true, because you couldn’t 
make them up if you try,” said 
Eric Sabree, Wayne County’s 
deputy treasurer of land man-
agement. Officials expect more 
than 14,000 property owners 
to seek help over seven days of 
hearings that run through Feb. 

6.

“We have to collect taxes 

by law ... but we definitely do 
not want to take the property,” 
Sabree said. “We want to show 
options that people have to 
save their properties.”

More than 60,000 of the 

county’s 
76,000 
foreclosed 

properties 
are 
in 
Detroit, 

threatening 
neighborhoods 

that have yet to recover from 
the national mortgage crisis.

About $326 million in taxes, 

interest and fees are owed on 
the foreclosed homes, lots and 
other buildings in Detroit. 
Mapping data shows that about 
37,000 of those properties are 
occupied.

“One of the reasons why we 

want people to stay in their 
homes is because when they 
become abandoned, they get 
stripped. They become a crime 
scene. They become a drug 
house,” Sabree said. “It’s bet-
ter to let the person stay in the 
house and collect taxes even 
if it takes longer to collect the 
money.”

Mourice Neal was looking 

for just a little help. His tax bill 
is $4,900 on a home he bought 
in 2013 on Detroit’s North End. 
Paying that amount would 

dangerously stretch what he 
receives in Social Security pay-
ments.

“It’s a good process. They 

are looking at my income,” said 
Neal, who is 46.

But Thomas Jackson left 

his hearing without know-
ing if anything could be done 
with the $27,000 tax bill on his 
home in northwest Detroit. He 
said he was told special con-
sideration was needed to get a 
payment plan. He has another 
hearing next month.

“They told me they can’t 

help me here,” said Jackson, 
40, who has not paid taxes on 
his home since 2012, when he 
lost his automotive job.

He has since found a new job 

and wants to keep the house he 
bought in 2009, but said losing 
it would not be the end of the 
world.

“I’m working now. I can find 

somewhere else,” he said.

Regina Lee, 50, went to the 

hearing ready to pay the $1,200 
owed on two lots that sandwich 
the home she grew up in. She 
said she was unaware her now-
deceased grandmother listed 
her as owner of the lots until 
a relative received a foreclo-
sure notice from the county.

PAUL SANCYA/AP

Homeowners sit in a conference room in Detroit’s Cobo Center while waiting for their cases to be heard to avoid 
foreclosure from tax debts in Detroit, Thursday, Jan. 29.

