About the Harry Potter Lexicon

On this page:

• Editorial policy
• Staff of the Lexicon
• Contacting the Lexicon
• History of the Lexicon

Related pages

• Sources of Lexicon information
• Abbreviations
• About the artists
• Main FAQ Page
• Support the Lexicon
• About the "error" on the Lexicon banner graphic
• An example of Steve's notes on book five
• Lexicon Master Index

Statement of Editorial Policy

The Lexicon strives to publish only strictly canon information in its encyclopedia sections. The Lexicon is very specific in its list of canon sources.

If the Lexicon makes a mistake, we will admit the mistake immediately, take steps to retract the information, and offer an explanation and apology if necessary.

The Lexicon will not seek, encourage, or accept "leaked" information from anyone attempting to compromise the confidentiality of their position.  If we have any reason to believe information was accidentally or dishonestly released, we will not publish it.

The Lexicon seeks to be accurate and current.  The issue of spoilers is irrelevant to known accurate information.

The Lexicon holds J.K. Rowling and her fans in the highest regard. Her respect is of the utmost importance to us, as is the trust of our readers. We will do everything in our power to earn and keep that respect.

Staff of the Harry Potter Lexicon

"I'll want a pay rise, Dumbledore!"
  - Horace Slughorn (HBP4)

"Twice nothing is still nothing!"
 - Cyrano Jones, "The Trouble With Tribbles"

The staff of the Lexicon has expanded recently and now consists of the following people.

• Steve Vander Ark (SVA) is the creator, editor in chief, and webmaster. His email address is steve@hp-lexicon.info. He started the Lexicon back in 2000 as a tiny little website with a few lists on it. He's the one who created the graphics and most of the writing on the 700+ pages of the current Lexicon is his. Steve is also a freelance writer, a theatre director, a library media specialist, and a public speaker.

• Penny Linsenmayer handles email and project management. When you email the Lexicon, Penny is the one who will be answering you, most likely. Penny's email address is penny@hp-lexicon.info, but mail sent to info@hp-lexicon.info goes to her too.

• Clint Hagen joined the staff in 2005 to manage The Lexicon Tours and is also the coding wizard behind the Canon Portkey, the Pensieve, the Remembrall, and the searchable timelines. He's always got a project in the works somewhere, so keep watching for new things! Clint teaches Latin for a living, and you might have seen him in the fandom as "Agrippa." His e-mail address is clint@hp-lexicon.info.

• Michele Worley (MLW) is a senior writer. Real life keeps Michele very busy sometimes, and when that happens we miss her. She deserves a lot of the credit for the Lexicon being updated as quickly as it was after OP came out. Michele is the editor for the magic pages and the Reader's Guides. Michele's email address is michele@hp-lexicon.info.

• Josh Santilli is Steve's assistant editor. Josh lives in Australia, so IM sessions tend to be late night affairs for Steve, but since Steve tends to stay up way too late anyway, it's not much of a problem. Josh has been doing a lot of editing all through the Lexicon. He also manages and edits the Floo Home Page. UPDATE: Josh has decided it would be best to take a leave of absence to turn his attention to his studies. We'll miss him around here and wish him all the best.

• Lisa Bunker is also a senior writer for the Lexicon. Lisa is a librarian, just like Steve, so they both speak reference-talk, which is a bit scary. Lisa edits the character pages specifically, but with Michele she acts as a web design consultant for the Lexicon. Lisa is also the owner of Accio Quote!, another of the Floo Network partners. Lisa's blog is "Madam Pince's Potter Pages." Her email address is lisa@hp-lexicon.info.

• Kip Carter is the Commander in Chief of the Lexicon Forum. His amazing ability to work with both people and computers has allowed the Forum to grow into one of the best Harry Potter communities on the web. Kip's email address is kip@hp-lexicon.info.

• Denise Proctor is Kip's assistant. She's as talented as Kip and as nice as anyone you could possibly hope to meet - unless you're a troll on the forum, in which case she's one of the most dangerous people you could possibly hope to meet. Denise and Kip are nothing short of incredible. The Lexicon is just so lucky to have people like this on staff. Denise's email address is denise@hp-lexicon.info.

• Belinda Hobbs is the editor for the jkrowling.com guide section of the Lexicon. Belinda's enthusiasm and creativity have made it the best guide to Jo's site to be found anywhere. Bel also manages the Floo Network page and helps in numerous ways all over the Lexicon. Her email address is belinda@hp-lexicon.info

• John Kearns came aboard just before the release of Half-Blood Prince to help us manage the influx of new information that a new book brings. John works in theatre as a stage manager. He writes well and has a knack for cataloging and indexing. Talk about a perfect person for the job... John's email address is john@hp-lexicon.info.

• Paula Hall joined the staff at the end of 2005, taking over a backlog of essays from Penny and Steve and publishing many new essays since. If you would like the Lexicon to consider for publication an essay you've written, Paula is the person to send it to. Paula's address is paula@hp-lexicon.info.
  

Please take note of the following. None of us is JK Rowling or has any connection with her in any way, shape, or form. We don't know how to contact her, so don't bother asking. We do know that Jo visits the Lexicon on occasion to look up a fact, which delights us more than we can even express. However, we can't get messages to her or pass along your emails. We are not associated with Warner Bros. or Scholastic or Bloomsbury or any of the other official Potter entities. We're just fans; that's all.

 

Contacting the Lexicon

Have something to say? Please follow these steps.

1. Please read the Lexicon FAQ. We get asked many of the same questions over and over. A big part of the reason for creating that FAQ is to give answers to those questions and save you the trouble of emailing (and us the trouble of emailing back and telling you to read the FAQ).
2. Try looking it up, either with the search or in the main index. If the answer to your question is in the Lexicon already, we probably won't respond to your email.
3. Do you have a theory or want to discuss the puzzles and mysteries? Don't send us an email, join the Lexicon Forum. We don't have time to discuss theories and ideas with everyone. That's what a forum is for. You'll find lots of really nice, intelligent people there who are eager to discuss Harry Potter.
4. If you're asking about rights to use material from the Lexicon, email Steve. No one else can give that kind of permission. His email address is steve@hp-lexicon.info.
5. If you're from a media outlet, also contact Steve. If you contact anyone else on staff, they'll just tell you to contact Steve. Save yourself the extra step by just asking him in the first place.
6. Email us, but not before you've worked through the previous steps. And then be patient. We get a huge amount of email and it takes us a little while to get back to people sometimes.If you want to contact any of us directly, use these addresses:

• Editor and Webmaster: Steve Vander Ark - steve@hp-lexicon.info
• Communications Manager: Penny Linsenmayer - penny@hp-lexicon.info
• Senior Writers: Michele Worley - michele@hp-lexicon.info
  • Lisa Bunker - lisa@hp-lexicon.info
• Forum Manager: Kip Carter - kip@hp-lexicon.info
• Assistant Forum Manager: Denise Proctor - denise@hp-lexicon.info
• Assistant Editors: Belinda Hobbs - belinda@hp-lexicon.info
  • John Kearns - john@hp-lexicon.info
• Essay editor: Paula Isola - paula@hp-lexicon.info

History of The Harry Potter Lexicon

The Harry Potter Lexicon began before I (Steve) even finished reading the first book. You see, I've always kept notes and drawn diagrams and made lists about things I enjoy. I have blueprints that I drew of the Death Star, painstakingly drawn in 1977. I have a huge chart of all the episodes of Hogan's Heroes, listing everything from writers and directors to the gadgets that were used and when. I wrote notebook after notebook of detailed descriptions of Star Trek characters and technology. When I encounter a well-designed and imagined world in movies, television, or books, I find it almost impossible not to catalog it.

Like I said, when I read the first Harry Potter book, the Lexicon began. I started cataloging it in my head, noticing details, scribbling down the page numbers where I could find the names of various books, and so on. I started scribbling maps of the castle. But I fought it. Cataloging something as thoroughly as I tend to do is HARD WORK. It takes a lot of time. It tends to take over my free time and annoy my wife. And it's also pretty much a thankless task, since no matter how carefully and expertly I do the work, no one ever sees and appreciates it.

This time it was different, though. This time there was the Internet. This time I could share all this work with a few other people. And the Harry Potter universe was just so exciting and fun and detailed and wonderful. But still I resisted. And then I read book two (and I remembered having some pretty strong doubts about book two, which looked as if it might have a flying car in it, which just didn't fit the world that I was imagining). I wavered now. Just reading through the description of the Weasley house made me want to start writing. Book three didn't help a bit. I knew that I was getting hooked. I started my first notebook with notes from Chamber of Secrets. I really can't remember why I started with the second book and not the first, but I did. And before you know it, I was moving on the book three. I filled page after page.

These notebooks are written in the order of the story, one chapter at a time. I automatically categorize everything as I go, so when I write down a magic spell or effect, I write "sp" in the margin. Everything gets a little scribble of some kind in the margin. I worked through three, and then went back for book one.

It was about then that two key events happened. I joined Harry Potter for Grown Ups and Goblet of Fire came out.

The Lexicon came into official existence a week later, in July of 2000.

At first it was just a series of lists. Lists of books, lists of Wizard Cards, lists of Death Eaters, and so on. I was trying to think up a good name for the site and settled on Lexicon because Encyclopedia was taken (by the now defunt Encyclopedia Potterica). Lexicon refers to a list of words, and at first, that's what this was. I can remember sitting on my back porch and running the name Harry Potter Lexicon over in my head and thinking that it sounded okay. I still think it sounds okay, although the Lexicon itself has grown way past being just a list of words.

In November, 2000 the Lexicon appeared for the first time on Yahoo, and within a week was chosen as a featured site in USA Today.

Of course, once I started it was impossible to stop. I'm a librarian, and I could imagine what the perfect reference source would look like. Once I could picture it and knew I could do it, I just had to make it happen. So I turned the list of spells into the Spell Encyclopedia and added the Bestiary and the Atlas. That was in the spring of 2001. Since then the Lexicon has grown until it encompasses nearly all factual information from canon sources, organized and crosslinked. The Lexicon Forum is a recent addition which provides an opportunity for Harry Potter fans of all ages to discuss their favorite books. Kip Carter has done a masterful job of managing the forum, and that hasn't been an easy job lately. Things should be back to normal soon, though, and I know I'm not the only one eager to have the forum back to its old lively self.

Another exciting development for the Lexicon is the creation of The Floo Network. In June, several of the best Harry Potter websites in the world joined forces. Through a shared toolbar, each site linked itself to the others to provide for fans the world's most complete and amazing set of tools for exploring the Harry Potter universe. The Floo Network is still evolving and getting better. Recent additions include Madam Scoops', the Leaky Cauldron forum, and Potter Parties.

The next major milestone for the Lexicon was the release of Order of the Phoenix in June 2003. On that exciting weekend, the Lexicon was featured in a variety of places in the media--radio, television, magazines, and newspapers--and I was even interviewed on the Today Show. In mid-August, I brought Michele Worley on board as the first ever assistant editor, and since then the huge job of incorporating the new information from Order of the Phoenix has been moving ahead very quickly. We're not all caught up yet, but we're getting there.

The Lexicon has been mentioned on the websites of both Scholastic and Bloomsbury. Warner Bros. has given its permission for the Lexicon to use the graphics drawn by Mary GrandPré for the books. The Lexicon is currently one of the most-often referenced Harry Potter website on Google behind Warner Bros. and Scholastic. It's considered by fans to be the most complete and authoritative reference to the Harry Potter universe in existence and is visited by many thousands of fans daily from all over the planet. That's really cool. I love the Internet.

At the end of June, 2004, Jo Rowling paid the Lexicon a high honor indeed. She gave the Lexicon her Fan Site Award. The traffic on the Lexicon grew by quite a bit and several new staff members were added to help out. Penny Linsenmayer came on board to handle email and oversee projects. Josh Santilli became the new editor, working closely with Steve to work through all the pages and find the typos, errors, omissions and to create new material. Lisa Bunker, who already was working on Madam Scoops', took over as editor of the character pages.

The Lexicon continues to grow. New material is added almost every day. The Forum is going gangbusters. The Floo Network is growing strong. With book six just out and the next film coming out in a couple of weeks, we won't be sitting around idle any time soon.