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

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Dozens of digital classics resources are mentioned <strong>in</strong> this paper, and a full bibliometric analysis of
even one of the projects would be far beyond the scope of this review. Nonetheless, sample searches
with<strong>in</strong> Google Scholar for two projects, the PP and the APIS, illustrated that these resources are <strong>in</strong>deed
cited with<strong>in</strong> the larger scholarly literature, even though these citations are not always easy to f<strong>in</strong>d. For
example, the PP has been used to explore spatial relationships and estimate population size settlements
(Mueller and Lee 2004), as one source of data for an onomastic study of Hebrew and Jewish-Aramaic
names (Honigman 2004), and as a source of data for a population study of Hellenistic Egypt (Clarysse
and Thompson 2006). Digital images and translations of <strong>in</strong>dividual papyrus fragments with<strong>in</strong> the APIS
have also been cited <strong>in</strong> different publications, <strong>in</strong>clud<strong>in</strong>g a discussion of a comic fragment (Barrenechea
2006) and <strong>in</strong> the study of Greek hepatoscopy (Coll<strong>in</strong>s 2008). Interest<strong>in</strong>gly, while all three of the
citations to the Prosopographica Ptolemaica either listed the database by name <strong>in</strong> the article or
footnotes or <strong>in</strong>cluded URLs to the collection, neither of the references to the APIS <strong>in</strong>cluded URLs to
the <strong>in</strong>dividual papyrus records they used. 570
A specific citation study for electronic resources <strong>in</strong> classics by Dalbello et al. (2006) exam<strong>in</strong>ed the
number and types of citations to electronic resources made by classicists <strong>in</strong> three important journals
(Classical Journal, Mnemosyne, and Classical Antiquity). 571 As the authors considered classics to be a
field known for digital <strong>in</strong>novation, they expected to f<strong>in</strong>d many references to digital scholarly resources,
but <strong>in</strong>stead found that references were typically made to educational sites, such as <strong>in</strong> articles that
discussed learn<strong>in</strong>g about the discipl<strong>in</strong>e, <strong>in</strong> reports of practice that discussed the recent history of the
discipl<strong>in</strong>e, and <strong>in</strong> articles that analyzed the potential use of technology for research. “More rarely are
the associations to electronic resources <strong>in</strong>cluded for knowledge build<strong>in</strong>g <strong>in</strong> a traditional scholarly
fashion,” Dalbello et al. observed, “such as – <strong>in</strong>tegrated <strong>in</strong> the literature review, support<strong>in</strong>g the ma<strong>in</strong>
argument, etc.” With<strong>in</strong> classical journals, the types of websites cited <strong>in</strong>cluded community of practice
sites, university sites, digital library sites, encyclopedias, onl<strong>in</strong>e dictionaries, electronic libraries, and
electronic journals. Thus Dalbello et al. remarked that while digital resources were discussed as
teach<strong>in</strong>g tools or <strong>in</strong> state-of-the-art reviews, they were not be<strong>in</strong>g used to create new knowledge or as
research tools. Despite the presence and use of digital resources, Dalbello et al. concluded that most
classicists still perceived of publication as paper-based:
Our f<strong>in</strong>d<strong>in</strong>gs <strong>in</strong>dicate that the structur<strong>in</strong>g of literature <strong>in</strong> these fields is largely still perceived as
paper-based. … Documentary cultures result<strong>in</strong>g from digitization of resources support<strong>in</strong>g
traditional research and digital preservation as well as multiple document formats for scholarly
journals (electronic, paper) present a new research environment for the humanities discipl<strong>in</strong>es
that is not as yet fully <strong>in</strong>tegrated <strong>in</strong> the canonical knowledge base. These citation practices po<strong>in</strong>t
to the still <strong>in</strong>visible nature of the electronic document that is now ubiquitous <strong>in</strong> support<strong>in</strong>g the
actual research practice (Dalbello et al. 2006)
The last<strong>in</strong>g <strong>in</strong>fluence of the pr<strong>in</strong>t paradigm has also been explored <strong>in</strong> terms of “digital <strong>in</strong>cunabula,” or
how the conventions and limitations of pr<strong>in</strong>t publication have shaped the development digital projects
(Crane et al. 2006).
The Research Habits of Digital Humanists
Another approach to determ<strong>in</strong><strong>in</strong>g the actual use of digital classics resources is to survey the users who
work with them. S<strong>in</strong>ce no studies that specifically exam<strong>in</strong>ed the scholarly use of digital classics
570 But the record for the papyrus utilized <strong>in</strong> Barrenechea (2006) does list his publication <strong>in</strong> its bibliography,
(http://wwwapp.cc.columbia.edu/ldpd/apis/itemmode=item&key=columbia.apis.p1550)
571 This research also explored electronic citations made <strong>in</strong> English literature journals.