BETA

BETA is based upon and derived from BOOST (Bibliography of Old
Spanish Texts), originally compiled starting in 1974 as part of the
computer-assisted Dictionary of the Old Spanish Language project at the
Medieval Spanish Seminary of the University of Wisconsin, Madison. The
purpose of BOOST was to aid in the selection of the corpus upon which that
dictionary was to be based.

BETA has evolved dramatically since 1974, both in purpose and in scope.
Like its congeners BITAGAP, BITECA, and BIPA, BETA's purpose now is
nothing less than to provide a comprehensive union catalog of the primary sources,
manuscript and printed, for the study of medieval Spanish culture.
The original 966 entries of the first edition of BOOST (1975) have
expanded to the almost 30,000 of this new web version.

BETA focuses on texts written in Castilian, but also includesPart I of the same text in BNM 10236 (BETA manid 1059) must
have been finished before March 25, 1458, the date of death
of Íñígo López de Mendoza,
Marquess of Santillana, for whom it was transcribed.
Similarly, Gonzalo de Ocaña's translation of the Diálogos
of St. Gregory (BETA texid 1360) must have been finished before ca. 1460,
the date of death of Fernán Pérez de Guzmán,
to whom the translation was dedicated.

Since the Dictionary of the Old Spanish Language (DOSL) was conceived as a
citation-based lexicon, like the Oxford English Dictionary (OED),
Lloyd Kasten, its director, and John Nitti, associate director, realized that
they needed to seek those citations in authentic medieval texts produced prior
to 1500 rather than in modern editions, whose editorial criteria varied widely.
Thus the first edition of BOOST (1975), compiled in-house by Jean Gilkison
and