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

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freedom and reusability, Smith recasts Richard Stallman’s four k<strong>in</strong>ds of freedom for free software 593 —
the freedom to run, study, redistribute, and improve and release <strong>in</strong> terms of the Homer Multitext. The
freedom to run <strong>in</strong>cludes the ability to read a text or view an image; freedom to study <strong>in</strong>cludes the
ability to see how resources are encoded; freedom to redistribute <strong>in</strong>volves the ability to share and
redistribute the digital objects, and freedom to improve and release <strong>in</strong>cludes the ability to edit and
resample or redistribute texts and images.
In addition, the abstract object model of the HMT project has been translated <strong>in</strong>to an application
architecture that will ensure that the “functionality of Multitext applications can persist as easily as the
data <strong>in</strong> our simple archival storage formats” (Smith 2010, 132). This has led the project to adopt four
basic architectural pr<strong>in</strong>ciples: (1) to support reuse of code, application programm<strong>in</strong>g <strong>in</strong>terfaces (APIs)
were used for “dist<strong>in</strong>ct components of the system”; (2) “<strong>in</strong>dependent decoupled components” were
used whenever possible; (3) all these components have been exposed to the Internet; and (4) all
software has been released under a GNU license. As Smith succ<strong>in</strong>ctly concludes, “Taken together,
these pr<strong>in</strong>ciples lead us to an architecture built on a suite of self-conta<strong>in</strong>ed network services with
explicit APIs, implemented <strong>in</strong> free software” (Smith 2010, 132).
For many of the earliest digital classics projects, however, the primary concern was open access, a
revolutionary move <strong>in</strong> itself at the time, and this was primarily def<strong>in</strong>ed as provid<strong>in</strong>g free access to
scholarship on the web. One of the earliest projects to follow this model was the Bryn Mawr Classical
Review (BMCR). 594 Accord<strong>in</strong>g to its website, BMCR “publishes timely reviews of current scholarly
work <strong>in</strong> the field of classical studies (<strong>in</strong>clud<strong>in</strong>g archaeology).” BMCR began as a listserv <strong>in</strong> 1990, the
first gopher site became available <strong>in</strong> 1992, and the current website emerged from a partnership with the
Stoa Consortium. The entire archive of BMCR reviews (from 1990 onward) is available on this
website and can be browsed by year, reviewer, or author. A large number of reviewers participate <strong>in</strong>
the BMCR, and all reviews have stable URLs so that they can be cited and l<strong>in</strong>ked to easily. S<strong>in</strong>ce
August 2008, the BMCR has also offered a blog 595 that publishes citation details and a l<strong>in</strong>k to reviews
on the BMCR website as <strong>in</strong>dividual blog entries, so that users can subscribe to the blog and get updates
of BMCR content through a blog reader program as well as leave comments on reviews. In addition,
the BMCR provides a daily e-mail digest as another way of push<strong>in</strong>g out its content.
A larger undertak<strong>in</strong>g that also focused on creat<strong>in</strong>g a collaborative community and new digital
publish<strong>in</strong>g opportunities is the “Stoa Consortium for Electronic Publication <strong>in</strong> the Humanities,” 596
often simply referred to as Stoa. This consortium was founded <strong>in</strong> 1997 by the late Ross Scaife and
accord<strong>in</strong>g to its website exists to serve a number of purposes: “dissem<strong>in</strong>ation of news and
announcements, ma<strong>in</strong>ly via the gateway blog; discussion of best practices via discussion groups and
white papers; and publication of experimental on-l<strong>in</strong>e projects, many of them subject to scholarly peer
review.” The Stoa consortium states that “open access to networked scholarship” is one of their
strongest pr<strong>in</strong>ciples. This is strongly illustrated by the large number of hosted projects at Stoa,
<strong>in</strong>clud<strong>in</strong>g Ancient City of Athens (a photographic archive of archaeological and architectural rema<strong>in</strong>s
of ancient Athens <strong>in</strong>tended for students and teachers), 597 Ancient Journeys (an onl<strong>in</strong>e festschrift), 598
Confessions 599 of August<strong>in</strong>e (an onl<strong>in</strong>e repr<strong>in</strong>t of the text with a commentary by James J. O’Donnell),
593 http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
594 http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/
595 http://www.bmcreview.org/
596 http://www.stoa.org/
597 http://www.stoa.org/athens/
598 http://www.stoa.org/lane/
599 http://www.stoa.org/hippo/