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

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digital corpus of <strong>in</strong>scriptions than it is to modify a pr<strong>in</strong>ted volume and that digital editions also make it
simpler for scholars to work together collaboratively. These new forms of collaboration, however,
create questions regard<strong>in</strong>g data ownership and authorship credit. Indeed, many of the greatest
challenges may be social rather than technical, Roueché concluded.
The second major part of the InsAph corpus is IAph 2007, 352 which provides access to the first edition
of an onl<strong>in</strong>e corpus of <strong>in</strong>scriptions from Aphrodisias that were recorded up to 1994. All of the editions,
translations, and commentary have been provided by Joyce Reynolds, Charlotte Roueché, and Gabriel
Bodard. In addition, the <strong>in</strong>scriptions have been marked up us<strong>in</strong>g EpiDoc and <strong>in</strong>dividual XML files for
<strong>in</strong>scriptions or the entire XML repository of <strong>in</strong>scriptions can be downloaded from the site along with a
DTD. 353 Slightly more than 1,500 <strong>in</strong>scriptions (one-third of which have not been previously published)
are available through the database, and the whole collection can be searched by free text (Greek, Lat<strong>in</strong>,
and English <strong>in</strong> transcriptions and editions) or by category (such as date, object text, and text type).
Brows<strong>in</strong>g access to the <strong>in</strong>scriptions is also provided through different “Tables of Contents,” <strong>in</strong>clud<strong>in</strong>g
locations, date, text categories, monument types, decorative features, and texts new to the edition.
Interest<strong>in</strong>gly, this database also provides a number of <strong>in</strong>dexes to the <strong>in</strong>scriptions, <strong>in</strong>clud<strong>in</strong>g Greek
words, Lat<strong>in</strong> words, personal and place names, and several other characters and features. There is also
a “Plan of Aphrodisias” 354 that allows users to choose a section of the city and then provides them with
a list of <strong>in</strong>scriptions <strong>in</strong> that area. Each <strong>in</strong>scription record <strong>in</strong>cludes extensive <strong>in</strong>formation, multiple
images, the Greek or Lat<strong>in</strong> text, a diplomatic transcription, an EpiDoc XML file, and an English
translation. In addition, each <strong>in</strong>scription has a citable and permanent URL. 355
Two recent articles by Gabriel Bodard (Bodard 2008, Bodard 2006) have looked at some of the issues
regard<strong>in</strong>g the benefits and difficulties of creat<strong>in</strong>g electronic publications of <strong>in</strong>scriptions such as IAph
2007. Bodard listed six features for analysis <strong>in</strong> terms of the opportunities of electronic publication:
accessibility, scale, media, hypertext, updates, iterative research, and transparency. The digital
publications of the <strong>in</strong>scriptions of Aphrodisias were the first major ones to adopt EpiDoc, Bodard
expla<strong>in</strong>ed, and the use of this standard based on a subset of the TEI guaranteed maximum
compatibility with many other digital humanities projects. One important th<strong>in</strong>g to note, Bodard
declared, was that:
An essential concept beh<strong>in</strong>d EpiDoc is the understand<strong>in</strong>g that this form of semantic markup is
not meant to replace traditional epigraphic transcription based on the Leiden conventions. The
XML may (and almost <strong>in</strong>evitably will) encode more <strong>in</strong>formation than the range of brackets and
sigla used <strong>in</strong> Leiden, but there will always be a one-to-one equivalence between Leiden codes
and markup features <strong>in</strong> the EpiDoc guidel<strong>in</strong>es (Bodard 2008).
As did Cayless et al. (2009) and Roueché (2009), Bodard argued that encod<strong>in</strong>g <strong>in</strong>scriptions <strong>in</strong> EpiDoc
is a natural extension of the work that epigraphists already do.
To return to the six features listed by Bodard, he argued that the most obvious benefit of electronic
publication was accessibility, and that publish<strong>in</strong>g <strong>in</strong>scriptions onl<strong>in</strong>e both serves as scholarly outreach
and fosters <strong>in</strong>terdiscipl<strong>in</strong>arity. Second, as was also argued by Roueché, Bodard advocated that scale
was one of the most significant opportunities for electronic publish<strong>in</strong>g. He revealed that unlike the first
pr<strong>in</strong>ted edition, ALA 2004 was able to <strong>in</strong>clude multiple photographs of each <strong>in</strong>scription, thus help<strong>in</strong>g
352 http://<strong>in</strong>saph.kcl.ac.uk/iaph2007/<strong>in</strong>dex.html
353 http://<strong>in</strong>saph.kcl.ac.uk/iaph2007/<strong>in</strong>scriptions/xml-repo.html
354 http://<strong>in</strong>saph.kcl.ac.uk/iaph2007/reference/plan.html
355 http://<strong>in</strong>saph.kcl.ac.uk/iaph2007/iAph040113.html - edition