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

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philology available at the website. Montanari suggested that two types of digital tools had been created
for philology and <strong>in</strong>deed for the humanities <strong>in</strong> general: (1) general electronic tools that were
transformed to fit more specific needs; and (2) new tools that were created to meet unique demands.
Accord<strong>in</strong>g to Montanari, an <strong>in</strong>creas<strong>in</strong>g familiarity with digital tools will be required of all philologists:
“The “new” classical scholar and teacher is supposed to be at home with this k<strong>in</strong>d of tools,” Montanari
asserted, add<strong>in</strong>g that “textual, bibliographical, and lexicographical databanks represent three of the
most relevant electronic tools available thanks to the progress of digital technology.”
The Aristarchus project, named after Aristarchus of Samothrace, <strong>in</strong>cludes a number of tools for
philologists study<strong>in</strong>g the Greek and Roman world and has been created by the University of Genoa.
The first tool, the “Lessico dei Grammatici Graeci Antichi” (LGGA) 520 or “Lexicon of Ancient Greek
Grammarians,” provides a lexicon of ancient Greek scholars and philologists and provides an onl<strong>in</strong>e
database that can be used to study the “history of ancient philology, grammar and scholarship.” In
addition, this website provides access to a second “lexicon,” the “Catalogus Philologorum
Classicorum” (CPhCL), 521 “an encyclopaedic lexicon that collects the biographies and the
bibliographies of modern classical scholars.” The largest database is “Poorly Attested Words <strong>in</strong> Greek
(PAWAG),” 522 which gathers together Ancient Greek words that have only been rarely attested and is
described by Montanari as a “half way house between a dictionary <strong>in</strong> the strict sense and an
encyclopedic lexicon.” Two specialist websites have been created by Aristarchus:
MEDIACLASSIC, 523 a “web site for didactics of the ancient Greek and Lat<strong>in</strong> languages”; and
“Scholia M<strong>in</strong>ora <strong>in</strong> Homerum,” 524 a site that provides an “up-to-date list<strong>in</strong>g, descriptions, editions and
digital images of the so-called Scholia M<strong>in</strong>ora to the Iliad and Odyssey on papyrus.” Images of papyri
can be viewed after registration. F<strong>in</strong>ally, the Aristarchus website hosts the Centro Italiano dell’Annee
Philologique (CIAPh), 525 the Italian editorial office of the <strong>in</strong>ternational Année Philologique.
Infrastructure for Digital Philology: The Teuchos Project
While the BAMBI and the Aristarchus projects explored the use of digital tools, both projects def<strong>in</strong>ed
philology <strong>in</strong> a fairly traditional manner, i.e., <strong>in</strong> terms of the type of work that would be performed. A
more expansive def<strong>in</strong>ition of philology was offered by Crane et al. (2009b): “Philology is thus not just
about text; it is about the world that produced our surviv<strong>in</strong>g textual sources and about the tangible
impact that these texts have had upon the worlds that read them.” To pursue a new level of ePhilology,
the authors argued that a new digital <strong>in</strong>frastructure needed to be developed that brought together all
relevant primary and secondary sources that are currently scattered <strong>in</strong> various specialized digital
libraries and that provided background knowledge personalized to the needs of <strong>in</strong>dividual scholars. In
addition, new digital editions and commentaries need to abandon the limited assumptions of pr<strong>in</strong>t
publications (e.g., simply scann<strong>in</strong>g a pr<strong>in</strong>ted book rather than creat<strong>in</strong>g a true digital edition), Crane et
al. (2009b) reasoned:
We now face the challenge of rebuild<strong>in</strong>g our <strong>in</strong>frastructure <strong>in</strong> a digital form. Much of the
<strong>in</strong>tellectual capital that we accumulated <strong>in</strong> the twentieth century is <strong>in</strong>accessible, either because
its pr<strong>in</strong>t format does not lend itself to conversion <strong>in</strong>to a mach<strong>in</strong>e-actionable form or because
520 http://www.aristarchus.unige.it/lgga/<strong>in</strong>dex.php
521 http://www.aristarchus.unige.it/cphcl/<strong>in</strong>dex.php
522 http://www.aristarchus.unige.it/pawag/<strong>in</strong>dex.php
523 http://www.loescher.it/mediaclassica/
524 http://www.aristarchus.unige.it/scholia/
525 http://www.aristarchus.unige.it/ciaph/<strong>in</strong>dex.php