Rome Wasn't Digitized in a Day - Council on Library and Information ...

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ancient literary texts or works (rather than documents) from the fourth century BC to 800 AD and
<strong>in</strong>cludes more than 3,600 “anonymous” texts. Accord<strong>in</strong>g to the website:
Text editions by classical philologists and patristic scholars are usually based upon medieval
manuscripts, dat<strong>in</strong>g many centuries after the work <strong>in</strong> question was first written down and
transmitted by copies from copies from copies. Here the user will f<strong>in</strong>d the oldest preserved
copies of each text. At the same time he will get a view of the reception of ancient literature
throughout the Hellenistic, Roman and Byzant<strong>in</strong>e period: which author was read when, where
and by whom throughout Antiquity.
Because LDAB focuses on books, this project has excluded documentary texts and references to
<strong>in</strong>scriptions. The database has a variety of advanced search<strong>in</strong>g features, <strong>in</strong>clud<strong>in</strong>g publication, editor,
catalogs, ancient author, book, century, date, provenance, nome/region, material (papyrus, parchment),
bookform, language/script, and script type (Greek, Lat<strong>in</strong>, Demotic, Coptic). For example, search<strong>in</strong>g on
the author Herodotus provides a list of documents that have discussed or made references to his
history. The LDAB provides an excellent way to study the reception of various classical authors and
provides l<strong>in</strong>ks <strong>in</strong>to various papyri collections.
Rather than provid<strong>in</strong>g a bibliography on a particular topic, P<strong>in</strong>ax Onl<strong>in</strong>e 32 offers an annotated list of
l<strong>in</strong>ks to onl<strong>in</strong>e bibliographies regard<strong>in</strong>g the ancient Greek world. This website is ma<strong>in</strong>ta<strong>in</strong>ed by Marc
Huys of the Department of Classical Studies, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, and l<strong>in</strong>ks are <strong>in</strong>cluded to
general bibliographies of the Greek world, bibliographies for <strong>in</strong>dividual Greek authors, and thematic
bibliographies (literature, l<strong>in</strong>guistics, mythology and religion, history, and archaeology).
In addition to bibliographies, there are a number of important onl<strong>in</strong>e catalogs for f<strong>in</strong>d<strong>in</strong>g digital
classical and medieval materials. LATO, or Library of Ancient Texts Onl<strong>in</strong>e, 33 has the goal of
provid<strong>in</strong>g the Internet’s “most thorough catalogue of onl<strong>in</strong>e copies of ancient Greek texts, both <strong>in</strong>
Greek and <strong>in</strong> translation.” This website does not host any actual texts but <strong>in</strong>stead ma<strong>in</strong>ta<strong>in</strong>s a set of
extensive l<strong>in</strong>ks to Greek texts and their translations on other sites such as Bibliotheca Augustana,
Perseus, Project Gutenberg, and Theoi Greek Mythology. The l<strong>in</strong>ks to texts are organized <strong>in</strong>
alphabetical order by author, with a list of the author’s works then organized by title. This catalog also
<strong>in</strong>cludes l<strong>in</strong>ks to many fragmentary authors
Another useful resource is the “Catalogue of <strong>Digitized</strong> Medieval Manuscripts,” 34 which was created by
the University of California, Los Angeles. This catalog attempts to provide a straightforward way of
discover<strong>in</strong>g medieval manuscripts on the web and is labeled as a “work <strong>in</strong> progress.” The catalog
currently conta<strong>in</strong>s more than 3,000 manuscript descriptions that can be searched by keyword, and the
catalog can also be browsed by location, shelfmark, author, title, or language (<strong>in</strong>clud<strong>in</strong>g Arabic, Greek,
and Lat<strong>in</strong>). Each manuscript description conta<strong>in</strong>s a l<strong>in</strong>k to the digitized manuscript.
A number of specialized research portals and directories to classical materials that encompass catalogs
are also available onl<strong>in</strong>e. The German website KIRKE (Catalog der Internetressourcen für die
Klassische Philologie), 35 created by Ulrich Schmitzer, <strong>in</strong>cludes an extensive onl<strong>in</strong>e directory of
resources on the Internet for classicists. Another helpful resource is SISYPHOS, 36 a searchable
32 https://perswww.kuleuven.be/~u0013314/p<strong>in</strong>axonl<strong>in</strong>e.html - Specifiek
33 http://sites.google.com/site/ancienttexts/
34 http://manuscripts.cmrs.ucla.edu/languages_list.php
35 http://www.kirke.hu-berl<strong>in</strong>.de/ressourc/ressourc.html
36 http://vifa.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/sisyphos/servlet/de.izsoz.dbclear.query.browse.Query/doma<strong>in</strong>=allg//lang=enquerydef=query-simple