This project is looking for serious volunteers from all parts of the site--new members, old members and everything in between.

Obviously any Dark Tower Fan Site worth its salt has got to have a way to search and reference the books in the series. We are talking about a site version of the concordance and book search all under one umbrella. Written top to bottom by the members of this site.

This will be yet another amazing resource for information on the internet about The Dark Tower. This website has already established itself and that sort of repository so the tradition will continue!!

A very large project that will take years to complete.

Please only serious volunteers past this point--we need commitment to see this through.

The Dark Tower Reference Companion:
  • A reference forum linked through Towerpedia! Not viewable from the site but accessible by all through said links.
  • "References" by person, place or thing. Then grouped into wiki "books" for easy navigation.
  • A reference mention for every article in the Towerpedia! Every person, place or thing that appears in the series referenced with page number and context.
  • A table of contents for each article grouped by book that will show other people, places and things from that book
  • People, places or things mentioned in multiple books will have an article for each book--grouped accordingly
    • meaning, Roland would have a reference page for each of the books--HUGE!!
  • Companion based on "references" to the people, places and things of Rolands world. Rolands entry would be other people speaking of him for instance.
    • This one we need to talk about because we need to create a standard for the structure of what we will put in here. Roland stopping to scratch his ass on page 215 in book three is too much.
Obviously a huge undertaking my friends.

The work will be divided into chapters. A member takes a chapter from any book and adds their name to the list announcing it.

That member combs that chapter for references and writes them down.

Then you give it to me or Daghain--very simple. We'll do the rest.

First piece of criteria to volunteer is that you have a Trade Hardback copy of the book (see references page for ISBN number). Daghain will posts specifics. We all have to use the same "edition" of the book for this so we decided to go with one a bunch of folks might have.

For instance, I have hardbacks only in the last 3...but I can choose a chapter from those if I like and get started.

The second piece of the criteria is commitment. If you choose a chapter and volunteer, please follow through.

You'll receive 1000.00 in site money per chapter

Hope this makes sense, I am hoping Bethany can help me keep this first post updated with the list of people who here to volunteer and submit their chapter choice.

Thank you!

The Gunslinger:

No chapters taken

The Drawing of the Three:

No chapters taken

The Waste Lands

No chapters taken

Wizard and Glass

No chapters taken

Wolves of the Calla

No Chapters taken

Song of Susannah

Matt: 12th Stanza: Jake and Callahan

The Dark Tower:

No chapters taken

More on the Companion:

Well, I finally came up with an example of what I am trying to accomplish. I'll add this post to the one at the beginning of the thread.

FAQ on the Companion:

What exactly do you want me to do?
  • All you have to do is pick a "section" of one book in the series. It must match the criteria above. Some books are divided differently, see the glossary page for clarification.
  • Let us know which one you are doing by posting or PMing anyone on the staff
  • Develop your system--an example of mine is below.
  • Begin with paragraph one, write anything significant the paragraph makes reference too (its actually really easy)
  • Make sure you keep track of page, section and paragraph numbers
  • **Hard part** --use a word processor to transcribe the paragraphs that contained a significant reference. (could take weeks)
  • Send that to me and I will do the rest
Each paragraph that contains a significant reference will be added to its page. Please try hard on the spelling and stuff, it needs to be right.

This is what I did, you don't have to mark in your book. I can get another one and its in pencil of course.




This is the note pad I kept:




This is a list of the individual references I found in that section (they are called "Stanza's" in the 6th book). Each of these will someday represent a Towerpedia! article with a link to its page that shows the reference for each book.

Why are we doing this?

Once this is done, we should have a visually search able index of each instance in which a particular person place or thing appeared in the books. By approaching it from that perspective, we don't have something that resembles flat retyping the book. Which we cannot do.

This will index it by it. For instance, Black Thirteen will have a wiki page. At the bottom will be links to every place it was mentioned in the books. That is what we will create.

Why so hard?

See above

Obviously, I am open to suggestions. I already have several pages of my section transcribed so I will be able to show you even more about how it will look in a week or so. Thanks to everyone who is considering helping with this project.

Is there a lot of typing?

Yes.