The Educational Times Database: Building an Online Database of Mathematics Questions and Solutions Published in a 19th-Century Journal

More to the point, however, is that nobody knows what these volumes contain.
… A bibliographer of great stamina is called for; and meanwhile a historian
will find many interesting surprises as he browses among its forgotten pages.

– Ivor Grattan-Guinness [1992]

The Educational Times and Journal of the College of Preceptors (ET) was an English academic journal first published in 1847. Aimed at educators across disciplines, it included a mathematical department to which any reader could submit a proposal or a solution for a mathematical problem. Demand for mathematical content from readers, in fact, was high enough to warrant the establishment in 1864 of Mathematical Questions with their Solutions taken from the “Educational Times” (MQ), a sister publication that reprinted and expanded on the ET’s mathematical sections. In 1918, the MQ ceased publication and the ET stopped printing mathematical problems. Over seventy years, the ET/MQ had published over 18,000 problems and 28,000 solutions. The resulting archive has remained of interest to mathematicians in the century since. Out of this interest have emerged various attempts to index the entire run of problems and solutions, so that interested scholars could look up the name of a mathematician to find out if and when she or he contributed to the journals. Most recently, Sloan E. Despeaux, professor of mathematics at Western Carolina University (WCU), North Carolina, has guided the creation of an online database that allows users to search for ET/MQ mathematical contributions by author name, question type, year, and/or volume number. The substantial index underlying the database is a creation of Dr. James Tattersall, Jr., professor of mathematics at Providence College, Rhode Island, who has been the “bibliographer of great stamina” that Grattan-Guinness called for in 1992. Now completed, the ET database aims to fulfill research and pedagogical needs in today’s global mathematics community, with particular relevance to historians of mathematics. The present article consists of five sections on various aspects of the ET database, starting with the two items of greatest practical relevance, followed by three items about the history of the ET/MQ and the database itself:

• How to Search the Educational Times Database
  Explains the main features of the database and how to use them.
• Using the Database in Mathematics Research and Pedagogy
  Explores the potential uses of the database in mathematics research and pedagogy.
• History of the Educational Times and Mathematical Questions,1847–1918
  Explains the significance of the ET and its contributors in the history of mathematics; divided into subsections on the founding of the journals and their early contributors; women contributors; and international contributors.
• Indexing the Contents of the MQ and ET Mathematics Sections,1940s–2000s
  Explains the history of efforts to index the ET/MQ’s run of mathematical problems and solutions.
• Building a Database of ET/MQ Problems and Solutions, 2010s
  Explains the development of the ET online database over the last five years.
• Conclusion – Reflections on Opening Up the Contents of the ET/MQ
  Reflects on the history of the ET/MQ and the database’s development.