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

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not an <strong>in</strong>convenience. This fact has tended to keep <strong>in</strong>scriptions <strong>in</strong> an academic limbo—not
quite literary text and not quite archaeological object (Bodard 2008).
In fact, Bodard claimed that electronic publication supports an entire reappraisal of <strong>in</strong>scriptions, and
that text encod<strong>in</strong>g and subject-based markup, <strong>in</strong> particular, <strong>in</strong>crease the ability to deal with <strong>in</strong>scriptions
as both texts and archaeological objects.
To del<strong>in</strong>eate the future of digital epigraphy, Cayless et al. (2009) referred to John Unsworth’s list of
scholarly primitives (Unsworth 2000)—“discovery, annotation, compar<strong>in</strong>g, referr<strong>in</strong>g, sampl<strong>in</strong>g,
illustrat<strong>in</strong>g, and represent<strong>in</strong>g”—and used it as a framework for analyz<strong>in</strong>g how well epigraphy
databases addressed these needs. They argued that epigraphy databases have been greatly successful <strong>in</strong>
support<strong>in</strong>g the task of discovery, and that provid<strong>in</strong>g the ability to search across texts has been one of
the major goals beh<strong>in</strong>d most digital epigraphy projects. In addition, any project published onl<strong>in</strong>e can
also be searched at least by Google. Indeed, as the survey of projects below illustrates, most digital
epigraphy projects are database driven. Cayless et al. noted, however, that the approach taken by most
epigraphy projects fails to address the other scholarly primitives, and that a different type of digital
representation is thus necessary.
To support this assertion, Cayless et al. briefly reviewed EDH, EAGLE, and several other digital
epigraphy projects, and suggested that they represented standard approaches to digitally represent<strong>in</strong>g
<strong>in</strong>scriptions and related data. They po<strong>in</strong>ted out that massive digitization projects such as Google Books
and the Internet Archive have also scanned a number of public doma<strong>in</strong> editions of <strong>in</strong>scriptions (though
Google Books sometimes restricts access to some of these texts without explanation, particularly to
users outside of the United States). The standard approach of most databases, as described by Cayless
et al., directly transfers a Leiden-encoded <strong>in</strong>scription to digital form with only some adjustments. In
contrast, they advocate the use of EpiDoc, a TEI XML standard created by Tom Elliott, for encod<strong>in</strong>g
<strong>in</strong>scriptions. Although conceived of as a common data <strong>in</strong>terchange format, Cayless et al. reported that
through a number of projects and workshops:
… EpiDoc has grown and matured. Its scope has expanded beyond (though not abandoned) the
orig<strong>in</strong>al vision for a common <strong>in</strong>terchange format. EpiDoc now aims also to be a mechanism for
the creation of complete digital epigraphic editions and corpora. We will argue that EpiDoc
represents a better digital abstraction of the Leiden conventions than is achievable by a simple
mapp<strong>in</strong>g Leiden’s syntax for pr<strong>in</strong>ted publication <strong>in</strong>to digital form. A full EpiDoc document
may conta<strong>in</strong>, <strong>in</strong> addition to the text itself, <strong>in</strong>formation about the history of the <strong>in</strong>scription, a
description of the text and its support, commentary, f<strong>in</strong>dspot and current locations, l<strong>in</strong>ks to
photographs, translations, etc. (Cayless et al. 2009).
As a result, they argue that EpiDoc can support the creation of more sophisticated digital editions and
digital corpora of <strong>in</strong>scriptions. In addition, the EpiDoc project has created tools to convert Leidenformatted
<strong>in</strong>scriptions automatically <strong>in</strong>to EpiDoc XML versions.
The Leiden conventions specify how <strong>in</strong>scription features besides the text should be represented <strong>in</strong> pr<strong>in</strong>t
and provide standard symbols that can be used to “convey the state of the orig<strong>in</strong>al document and the
editor’s <strong>in</strong>terpretation of that document” (Cayless et al. 2009). Directly mapp<strong>in</strong>g Leiden pr<strong>in</strong>t syntax to
a digital form, however, presented a number of issues that were covered <strong>in</strong> detail by the authors.
Cayless et al. also noted that digitally represent<strong>in</strong>g the typographic features of Leiden was only a first