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109 reviewed with<strong>in</strong>, the world of peer reviewed, cited, traceable, and replicable scholarship.” Consequently, all versions (with their URLs) of an <strong>in</strong>scription must be ma<strong>in</strong>ta<strong>in</strong>ed even if changes or corrections are made, <strong>in</strong> case a scholar has cited an earlier version of an <strong>in</strong>scription. For these reasons, as well as the challenges of project-based fund<strong>in</strong>g, the authors decided to create ALA 2004 and IAph 2007 not as “liv<strong>in</strong>g databases” but as more traditional “one-off publications.” The f<strong>in</strong>al feature analyzed by Bodard, the ability of electronic publication to support iterative research and transparency, was also previously discussed by this author and Garcés (2009) <strong>in</strong> terms of digital editions. The availability of source files and code makes research more replicable by other scholars because it provides access to primary source data; allows other scholars to exam<strong>in</strong>e the digital processes, markup, and techniques used to create the collection; and allows them to use their own algorithms and tools to create new digital editions. Such transparency is essential to all scholarly research, and Bodard concludes that: Even more central to the research process, however, is the fact that a true digital project is not merely the result of traditional classical research that is at the last m<strong>in</strong>ute converted to electronic form and made available onl<strong>in</strong>e. Rather the XML files (<strong>in</strong> the case of Inscriptions of Aphrodisias and other EpiDoc projects, other data models for other types of project) that lie beh<strong>in</strong>d the publication, are the direct result of, and primary tools for, the academic research itself. These files conta<strong>in</strong> the marked-up data, Greek or Lat<strong>in</strong> texts, descriptions, editorial commentary and argumentation, references and metadata, all <strong>in</strong> mach<strong>in</strong>e-readable and actionable form. It is this s<strong>in</strong>gle, structured collection of source data which is taken by the mach<strong>in</strong>e process and run through a series of XSLT stylesheets which generate, <strong>in</strong> turn, the web presentations of <strong>in</strong>dividual or groups of <strong>in</strong>scriptions, the contextual tables of contents, <strong>in</strong>dices, concordances, prosopographical and onomastic tables, and so forth (Bodard 2008). Thus, the electronic files and source code that have been created for this publication are every bit as important as, if not more important than, the website created from them. One project that is closely related both to ALA 2004 and to IAph 2007 is the Inscriptions of Roman Tripolitania (IRT 2009). 358 IRT 2009 is the enhanced electronic reissue of a publication that first appeared <strong>in</strong> 1952. Created by Gabriel Bodard and Charlotte Roueché, it is hosted by K<strong>in</strong>g’s College London. Electronic publication has allowed for the <strong>in</strong>clusion of the full photographic record of the orig<strong>in</strong>al pr<strong>in</strong>t publication and the l<strong>in</strong>k<strong>in</strong>g of the <strong>in</strong>scriptions to maps and gazetteers. As with IAph 2007, <strong>in</strong>dividual EpiDoc XML files and an entire XML repository of <strong>in</strong>scriptions can be downloaded. 359 There are a variety of ways to access the <strong>in</strong>scriptions. The chapters of the pr<strong>in</strong>t publication have been made available onl<strong>in</strong>e as text files with hyperl<strong>in</strong>ks to the relevant <strong>in</strong>scriptions. In addition, as with IAph 2007, various tables of contents (locations, dates, text categories, monument types) and <strong>in</strong>dexes (Lat<strong>in</strong> words, Greek words, fragments of text, personal names, and other features) provide alternative means of access to the <strong>in</strong>scriptions. The website notes that <strong>in</strong>dexes to this edition were generated from the texts themselves and thus differ from those of the pr<strong>in</strong>t edition. Each <strong>in</strong>scription record is similar to those <strong>in</strong> IAph 2007, with one key difference: many of the records <strong>in</strong> IRT have “f<strong>in</strong>dspots” that have been l<strong>in</strong>ked to maps. 360 A map can be used to browse the collection of <strong>in</strong>scriptions with l<strong>in</strong>ks provided to <strong>in</strong>dividual <strong>in</strong>scription records. Each <strong>in</strong>scription also has a citable and permanent URL. 358 http://irt.kcl.ac.uk/irt2009/<strong>in</strong>dex.html 359 http://irt.kcl.ac.uk/irt2009/<strong>in</strong>scr/xmlrepo.html 360 For example, the map for the f<strong>in</strong>dspot “Sirtica,” http://irt.kcl.ac.uk/irt2009/maps/<strong>in</strong>dex.htmlll=31.2,16.5&z=10
110 Another related project that has recently begun is the Inscriptions of Roman Cyrenaica (IRCyr). 361 This website provides access to <strong>in</strong>scriptions gathered by Joyce Reynolds of Newnham College Cambridge between 1948 and the present. This project draws on the experience ga<strong>in</strong>ed <strong>in</strong> publish<strong>in</strong>g ALA2004 and IAph 2007 and they plan to present the documents onl<strong>in</strong>e <strong>in</strong> a similar fashion to these websites and to l<strong>in</strong>k all <strong>in</strong>scriptions to an onl<strong>in</strong>e map of Roman Cyrenaica that is be<strong>in</strong>g prepared by the Pleiades project. No <strong>in</strong>scriptions database is currently available at this website. IAph 2007, IRT 2009, and IRCyr are also participat<strong>in</strong>g <strong>in</strong> the Concordia project. F<strong>in</strong>ally, another project that makes partial use of EpiDoc is the U.S. Epigraphy project, which is dedicated to collect<strong>in</strong>g and digitiz<strong>in</strong>g Greek and Lat<strong>in</strong> <strong>in</strong>scriptions but is focused on those preserved <strong>in</strong> the United States of America. 362 The project was founded at Rutgers University <strong>in</strong> 1995 and has been based at Brown University s<strong>in</strong>ce 2003, where the present website was developed with help from the Scholarly Technology Group. Every <strong>in</strong>scription that has been cataloged by this project has been assigned a unique identifier or U.S. epigraphy number. The database of almost 2,500 Greek and Lat<strong>in</strong> <strong>in</strong>scriptions can be browsed by publication or collection and searched for by language, place of orig<strong>in</strong>, date, type of <strong>in</strong>scription, type of object, and material (among many other metadata categories) as well as by bibliographic <strong>in</strong>formation. Accord<strong>in</strong>g to the website, a “grow<strong>in</strong>g digital edition of the collection currently registers some 400 transcriptions of Lat<strong>in</strong> texts encoded accord<strong>in</strong>g to EpiDoc conventions and provides some 1,000 photographs and images of the <strong>in</strong>scriptions <strong>in</strong> our corpus.” This makes the U.S. Epigraphy project one of the first major projects to beg<strong>in</strong> the encod<strong>in</strong>g of its texts <strong>in</strong> EpiDoc. The Challenges of L<strong>in</strong>k<strong>in</strong>g Digital Epigraphy and Digital Classics Projects As the preced<strong>in</strong>g overview of <strong>in</strong>scription projects demonstrated, there are records of many of the same <strong>in</strong>scriptions <strong>in</strong> various databases, and many databases have used their own technological implementations to provide access to collections onl<strong>in</strong>e. The sheer scale of many such projects and the grow<strong>in</strong>g number of <strong>in</strong>scriptions available onl<strong>in</strong>e require computational solutions. Recently Leif Isaksen has proposed the development of an “augmented reality mobile application” (such as for the iPhone) to support the “crowdsourc<strong>in</strong>g” of epigraphy (Isaksen 2009). In theory, such an application could allow tourists or archaeologists to submit spatially located images of <strong>in</strong>scriptions to a central <strong>in</strong>scription database that could also <strong>in</strong>clude a website where corrections and translations of <strong>in</strong>scriptions could be proposed based on multiple images of <strong>in</strong>scriptions. Creat<strong>in</strong>g a central database would also support research work <strong>in</strong> advanced-imag<strong>in</strong>g techniques for various cultural heritage projects. While a number of epigraphy websites make use of the EpiDoc standard, recent research by Álvarez et al. (2010) has noted that the use of EpiDoc alone is not enough to provide access to “open l<strong>in</strong>ked data” <strong>in</strong> that EpiDoc does not provide a way to encode “computational semantics” as it relies <strong>in</strong>stead on “structured metadata with text fields.” The authors contended that the encod<strong>in</strong>g of computational semantics for epigraphic data would provide an added value <strong>in</strong> that epigraphical <strong>in</strong>formation could then be reused by various Semantic Web applications. Similarly to Cayless et al. (2009), Álvarez et al. outl<strong>in</strong>ed a number of problems with us<strong>in</strong>g relational databases to represent epigraphical <strong>in</strong>formation, <strong>in</strong>clud<strong>in</strong>g the fact that as both texts and archaeological objects, a database of <strong>in</strong>scriptions must <strong>in</strong>clude both a full text of the <strong>in</strong>scription and a detailed description of its decoration and the place where it was discovered. In addition, <strong>in</strong>scriptions were written <strong>in</strong> numerous languages with various scripts, but there 361 http://ircyr.kcl.ac.uk/ 362 http://usepigraphy.brown.edu/
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"Rome Wasn
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ii ISBN 978-1-932326-38-3 CLIR Publ
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iv EpiDoc-Based Digital Epigraphy P
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vi ABOUT THE AUTHOR Alison Babeu ha
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viii PBW PCA PDB PDL PHI PLANETS PN
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x pursuit of knowledge about the an
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2 and intellectual
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4 associations to work together, an
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6 briefly explore issues that are n
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8 for English translations of Greek
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10 is created of the entire bibliog
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12 directory of more than 2,100 cat
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14 generated by the decision tree p
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16 The image-registration algorithm
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18 Schibel and Rydberg-Cox argued t
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20 information ret
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22 In ancient manuscripts, Sanskrit
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24 algorithms; ins
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26 Markov Models (MEMM) 82 and outp
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28 One major project to recently em
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30 developed a cuneiform sign reper
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32 and prayers), and edited texts a
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34 Digital critical editions, howev
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36 While these requirements may see
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38 many discrete texts, in<
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40 examine how l<s
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42 The second fact that Rob
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44 “multimedia scholarly editions
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46 different apparatuses. In Bosche
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48 individual text
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50 In these cases we must provide a
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52 First, it utilizes a nearest nei
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54 entirely pre-searched for each l
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56 As this research in</str
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Page 117 and 118: 106 To begin this
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Page 141 and 142: 130 Cayless thus developed a method
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160 philology available at the webs
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162 descriptions that provides scho
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164 of multilingua
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166 Another major methodological is
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168 ancient historians. Network ana
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170 Bradley and Short (2005) have o
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172 “apparently disconnected and
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174 sources used and their abbrevia
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176 resources, inc
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178 materials could be found, a rec
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180 or more documents (69 percent)
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182 This work tends to focus on des
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184 A related poin
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186 “infer user
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188 accessed; few providers, if any
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190 information so
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192 features. In addition, while pa
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194 postdoctoral students, who were
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196 computers by ancient historians
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198 Demos (a growin</strong
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200 database of this encyclopedia c
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202 academia.” At the same time,
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206 science and use ICT occasionall
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210 were exceptionally diverse, as
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214 tradition of European literatur
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220 SPQR—Supportin</stron
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222 environments in</strong
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226 methods,” Cohen et al. expla<
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230 This lack of deeper understand<
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232 expertise, tools, experience, a
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234 All link<stron
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236 of architecture, tools and serv
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238 reported that eSAD was develop<
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240 semantic tools that would make
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244 A recent ARL report that explor
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246 organizations and fundi
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248 throughout this review, i.e., o
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250 commercial providers. At the sa
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252 representations beyond the bord
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254 such as Vindol
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256 that the question of in
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258 Linguistic Com
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260 resources and technology overvi
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266 Interoperability”). 763 The m
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272 [Aschenbrenner et al. 2008]. As
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274 Editions.” Advances i
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276 [Bodard et al. 2009]. Bodard, G
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278 [Bulger et al. 2011]. Bulger, M
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280 [Choudhury and Stin</st
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282 [Crane et al. 2009a]. Crane, Gr
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284 [Dué and Ebbott 2009]. Dué, C
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286 [Flaten 2009]. Flaten, Arne R.
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288 [Hardwick 2000]. Hardwick, Lorn
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290 Conference on E-Science Worksho
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292 [Lockyear 2007]. Lockyear, Kris
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294 Cambridge, MA: Association for
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296 [Ntzios et al. 2007]. Ntzios, K
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298 [Reddy and Crane 2006]. Reddy,
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300 [Rydberg-Cox 2009]. Rydberg-Cox
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302 [Smith 2010]. Smith, D. Neel.
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304 and the Canadian Academic Commu
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306 [Wallom et al. 2009]. Wallom, D
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