From: "World Chess Championship", INTERNET:newsletter@mark-weeks.com Date: 00/07/15, 08:56 Re: Chess History on the Web (2000 no.14) The next review, our next to last following the Chess History bookmarks, is for the Max Euwe Centrum (MEC). The site is at address... http://www.maxeuwe.nl/ ...and is associated with the organization of the same name located in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The Center supports a museum, a library, and chess activities in general. The site is in the Dutch language, which presents a problem. I know of no online services which offer Dutch to English translation and I have no Dutch - English dictionary. Since many Dutch words have the same linguistic roots as their English counterparts, it is not too difficult to understand the essence of many of the pages. I found a Dutch - French dictionary, which I used for less obvious terms. I apologize in advance if I've made any mistakes about the content of a particular page. The home page informs us in English that 'The Max Euwe Centrum was founded in 1982 in Amsterdam. The main purpose is stimulating chess activities.' It also provides a telephone number for further information. The same page has two main links:- 1) [DE STICHTING 'The Foundation']/[DOELSTELLING 'Objective'] 2) [SPONSORS] and a few minor links -- [Nieuwe Website], [Schaakhistorie], [Dutchbase], & [Column] -- which jump to pages also accessible via the main links. [DE STICHTING]/[DOELSTELLING] offers seven menu items at the top of page and seven numbered links. The menu items are [ALGEMEEN 'General'] which is the current page, [COLUMN], [MUSEUM], [BIBLIOTHEEK 'Library'], [MEC/ACTUEEL 'News'], [LINKS], & [DENKSPORT 'Mindsports']. The seven numbered links are [1:Algemeen], [2:Bestuur 'Management'], [3:Medewerkers 'Collaborators'], [4:Geschiedenis 'History'], [5:Relaties 'Relationships'], [6:Hoofdsponsors 'Main sponsors'], & [7:Gastenboek 'Guest book']. [Geschiedenis] offers a very short biography of Euwe, World Champion and FIDE President. [ALGEMEEN] provides visiting information and has a photo of a large, outdoor chess set which is on the square next to the main entrance. How do I know this? I visited the center a little more than a year ago. If you travel to Amsterdam, it is worth a visit! [COLUMN] is a news article similar to columns found in many regional newspapers around the world. It has a story with local flavor, news from the international chess scene, and a noteworthy game. There is also an [Artikelarchief] containing past articles. [MUSEUM] has three numbered pages -- [1:Schaken en Kunst 'Chess art'], [2:Museumstukken MEC 'MEC museum pieces'], & [3:Schaken in Nederland in de negentiende eeuw 'Dutch chess in the 19th cent.']. It is not clear if the material is refreshed periodically. The art page currently has two images of 'priests and prelates' playing chess, while the MEC museum describes a 10x10 chess program and a very unusual chess clock. [BIBLIOTHEEK] also has three numbered pages -- [1:Boekbesprekingen 'Book reviews'], [2:Bibliotheek], & [3:Dutchbase]. [Boekbesprekingen] is presently empty, but informs us that the reviews will be written by Ton Sibbing. [Dutchbase], in English, is an offshoot of BritBase, the model for the national chess databases which are so popular around the Internet. I'll explore [Bibliotheek] a little later in this article. [MEC/ACTUEEL] has four numbered pages with the sort of information you'd expect about the Center's current events. [LINKS] is self-explanatory and [DENKSPORT] seems to be in progress, as the subpages are all empty. Returning to the home page, it is refreshing to see attention given to the Center's sponsors. Too often this information is buried in the details of an event. Sponsors don't offer their support in order to be ignored by the accompanying publicity. --- Let's return to the [Bibliotheek]. The main page, a function to search the Center's library, mentions that the library consists of 10183 titles. The search function works on four fields -- schrijver ('author'), titel, onderwerp ('topic'), & jaartal ('year') -- plus three specific combinations of these fields. The result of a search is a table showing the same four fields for each entry in the table. An additional link for each result provides supplementary information like publisher, place of publication, and the category of the work. I decided to take a closer look at the entries for the library. I noticed that the search on author requires only the first letter of the author's name, i.e. a search on 'A' returns all items in the catalog where the author's surname starts with the letter 'A'. I performed a search on each letter of the alphabet and downloaded the results to my computer. I then massaged the data to load it into Microsoft Access. I ended up with 5457 entries, which means that about half of the 10183 titles are not yet recorded in the online catalog. Data truncation in the results is significant. The 'Title' has a maximum length of 18 characters, 'Author' has 16 characters, and 'Topic' has 15 characters. As with most databases, data quality is an issue. There are 126 entries missing the Year and 15 entries where the Year is coded with a '-', e.g. '-16'. Having said that, the available data is far more important than the data which is missing or incorrect. Never having analyzed the complete content of a chess book catalog, I'd like to share the results, which you may also find enlightening. First, here's a count of the MEC titles by century... 15xx 1 16xx 1 17xx 14 18xx 237 19xx 5062 ...followed by a count by decade of titles published in the 20th century... 190x 65 191x 113 192x 189 193x 252 194x 273 195x 352 196x 558 197x 896 198x 1223 199x 1141 ...This shows an explosion in chess publishing over the past few decades. The earliest books in the collection are... Giuoco degli scacc - Lopez, R. (Ruy L - 1584 - ruy lopez Neu erfundenes gro - Weickhmann, C. - 1664 - diverse schaaks Giuoco degli scacc - Salvio, A. - 1723 - leerboek Nobel game of ches - Stamma, Ph. - 1745 - leerboek miniat Osservazioni teori - Lolli, G. - 1763 - leerboek Giuoco degli scacc - Cozio, C. - 1766 - partijen Giuoco degli scacc - Cozio, C. - 1766 - partijen Nouvelle maniere d - Stamma, Ph. - 1777 - stamma probleem Giuoco incomparabi - Ponziani, D. - 1782 - leerboek Schachspiel, das : - Sardenheim - 1784 - filosofie Bekwaame handleidi - Kersteman, P.L., - 1786 - leerboek Bekwaame handleidi - Philidor, F.A.D. - 1786 - leerboek Nouvel essai sur l - Stein, E. - 1789 - leerboek Anweisung zum Scha - Allgaier, J. - 1796 - leerboek Geist und die Gesc - Wahl, S. - 1798 - oudheid Ueber den Geist de - Uflacker, J. - 1799 - cultuur leerboe ...which lists all 16 titles published before 1800. There seem to be a few duplicates, but these may well be duplicate volumes in the collection. Here's a count by topic of the most popular topics... leerboek 315 'manual' jaarboek 283 'yearbook' [none] 217 partijen 149 'games' probleem 143 eindspelstudie 113 'endgame studies' algemeen 75 strategie 62 korte verhalen 54 'short stories' encyclopedie 53 ...The phrase 'korte verhalen' includes works like Assiac's 'Delights of Chess'. Continuing with the count by topic, the most popular chess personalities are... aljechin 34 capablanca 30 fischer 25 botwinnik 24 karpov 23 keres 22 kasparov 19 tal 19 euwe 14 morphy 13 ...Euwe is missing, but don't worry; a count by author shows the 25 most prolific writers on the game... Euwe, M. 256 Matanovic, A. 120 KNSB 56 N.N. 51 Sosonko, G., Ste 48 Suetin, A. 46 Bachmann, L. 44 Pachman, L. 44 Kooij, J. van de 43 Bouwmeester, H. 41 Averbach, J. 38 Niemeijer, M. 37 Reek, J. van 33 Hertog, H.J. den 31 Mieses, J. 31 Ned. Bond van Pr 29 Euwe, M., Kramer 28 Keene, R. 28 Reinfeld, F. 28 Schwarz, R. 27 Bouwmeester, H., 26 Botwinnik, M. 24 Richter, K. 23 Fine, R. 22 ...where Euwe heads the list. I started to prepare a discussion of these authors, but ran out of time (and space for this review). I'll post it as a reply to the copy of this article on the Chess History discussion group. Bye for now, Mark Weeks