h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: Philip Lampi - The Historian with No Home - A53069682
Author: Jordan - Three entries and a cloud of dust - U201497

Now, let me stress something. Lampi is an obscure character. I had to tap every vine I saw just to get the relatively short entry before you. If there are gaps in the story or points where more detail would be nice, please know that I agree and wish there was more information on the guy. There are a few things I'm not sure of and that I've had to sort of ignore:
I wish I knew what kind of car he drove around and slept in.
I am not 100% certain that he's not married, but a picture I saw of him doesn't show a wedding ring and one source made a sort of passing reference to his remaining alone.
I wish I knew more about where he went in his big tour in 1973.

Anyway, please review. I'm not in love with the title, by the way, if anyone has a suggestion.

Thanks,
Jordan

Very enjoyable read - thank you very much for submitting this!

I appreciate what the guy has done - collation of raw electoral data - but how exactly has this benefitted the nation? Do you have any examples of how it is used, eg subsequent academic studies or analysis based on Lampi's data?

Icy

Just had a quick search for Lampi. I can't add a lot to what you've already written.

I guess you saw the article 'The Orphan Scholar' in the journal 'Humanities' and a Boston Globe article on January 20, 2008: "Filling election gaps A man's passion for results helps write some history". These tie in with your entry.

The only other reference I found doesn't answer your three questions, but it does describe Lampi's view on free-access to data.

An article in the Wilkes Barre Times Leader, July 26, 2004, describes how history professor Harold Cox set up a free-access election statistics database, using Lampi's data.

"... in 1996 when Cox approached a consortium of universities that collect similar statistics, asking for some 19th-century election records. He was told he would need to pay more than $1,000."

The article then describes Cox's initial conversation with Lampi at the American Antiquarian Society:

Cox: "Do you have any of this (polling) information?"

Lampi: "Yes."

Cox: "May I have access to it?"

Lampi: "Sure."

Cox: "What's it going to cost me?"

Lampi: "Nothing. Knowledge is meant to be shared."

Nice entry, Jordan. I wish I could contribute something, but google.de asked me whether I meant 'Philip Lampe' (meaning lamp) and gave me lots of links to light bulbs, and Brockhaus (our equivalent to the Encyclopaedia Britannica) only mentions some Johann Baptiste Lampi the elder, an Austrian 18th Century painter, and his son.

I agree that 'The Historian with No Home' may not be the best. He had a home, I should have thought - he just slept in his car at weekends sometimes.

'The Historian Who Slept In His Car'?
'The Itinerant Historian'?
'The Man Who Loved Only Electoral Statistics'?

Thanks for that Icy, I hadn't seen that tiny Lampi snippet. I had two other sources, which I sort of really had to dig for. Unfortunately all of my sources are online, which I generally try to avoid if I can help it. There's been at least one occasion when I wrote an entry based off online sources and when I was finished, I checked the wikipedia page, only to find that whoever wrote that wiki was apparently using the same sources, so our entries had exactly the same info - just written much differently. Luckily, Philip Lampi has no wikipedia entry.

"I appreciate what the guy has done - collation of raw electoral data - but how exactly has this benefitted the nation? Do you have any examples of how it is used, eg subsequent academic studies or analysis based on Lampi's data?"

Not much yet, as far as I know. The only major conclusion that I understand to have come out of Lampi's work is about the importance of the Federalists as a regional party in New England after their collapse as a national party following the election of 1800. I think Lampi has helped to spread that conclusion himself, though.
If you do a google search with "Philip Lampi" in quotation marks like that, most of the results are simply studies or journals with references to his data in footnotes and parentheses, saying "data compiled by Philip Lampi, American Antiquarian Society" or something similar. It's being used, I think, bit by bit. I'm afraid I don't have any great example to offer.

The English google asks if I meant "philip lamp" also. As I say, not a very well known guy. If I type in my own full name to google, it doesn't try to correct me.

I went with "Historian with no home" mostly for the alliteration, I'll admit. I like "The Itinerant Historian" best of those three, Icy, and better than the current title. Let's see if others have more ideas.

I get interesting results when googling for your full name:

>>Looking for Hip Woman's Beach Wear? [name removed] Carries The Hottest Beach Wear For Women. Check Out Our Large Selection of Beachwear!<<

The wikipedia page for one of the Hanson brothers used to be the first result. Now I see it's dropped to fifth. But then my name is much less common than Mr. Lampi's.

Much *more* common, I mean to say.

Wonderful entry, Jordan.

Thanks El. I'm a bit nervous writing about someone who's still alive.

Icy, I added a short sentence saying that his info has been used in a lot of academic studies.

"I'm a bit nervous writing about someone who's still alive."

Don't be. You've done a good job.

"I'm a bit nervous writing about someone who's still alive."

That can be resolved fairly easily.

*muffled bang*

You'd just be creating more work for me as a biographer, you know, by creating mysterious death circumstances.

But you wouldn't need to update the entry.

I've added a few links and changed a few things.

Very enjoyable read.

Thanks.

Unfortunately, while testing the GuideML of another entry in progress, I accidentally deleted the current draft of this entry, so I had to go back to the draft stored on my computer It's not much different and I've made most of the alterations again that I made during the time it's been in PR, so hopefully I've not done much harm by being a complete and utter moron.

Anyone happen to have a clever idea for the title?

"It must be boring, Phil."

"What must be?"

"Just... waiting for three weeks for someone to notice you."

"Boring? Well, I've waited longer for less."

"Fair enough. I guess I just thought you've waited long enough."

"Well, nobody had written an entry about me in the nine years h2g2 has been around. They might never have. A few months' wait is understandable."