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

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themes. Each of these articles and the requirements it presents for a cyber<strong>in</strong>frastructure for classics are
considered here.
While the theme of the advanced nature of comput<strong>in</strong>g <strong>in</strong> classics has been documented throughout this
research, Crane, Seales, and Terras (2009) suggest that this very level of “advancement” may present
unexpected consequences:
The early use of digital tools <strong>in</strong> classics may, paradoxically, work aga<strong>in</strong>st the creative
exploration of the digital world now tak<strong>in</strong>g shape. Classicists grew accustomed to treat<strong>in</strong>g their
digital tools as adjuncts to an established pr<strong>in</strong>t world. Publication—the core practice by which
classicists establish their careers and their reputations—rema<strong>in</strong>s fundamentally conservative
(Crane, Seales and Terras 2009).
They consequently recommended that philologists, and <strong>in</strong>deed all classicists, move away from creat<strong>in</strong>g
specialized software and start creat<strong>in</strong>g specialized knowledge sources; they envision a new digital
<strong>in</strong>frastructure that supports the reth<strong>in</strong>k<strong>in</strong>g of all the traditional reference sources of classical studies. 641
The greatest barriers to be faced <strong>in</strong> creat<strong>in</strong>g this new <strong>in</strong>frastructure are social rather than technical, as
<strong>in</strong>dicated by the fact that no traditional elements of the scholarly <strong>in</strong>frastructure, <strong>in</strong>clud<strong>in</strong>g
commentaries, editions, grammars and lexicons, have truly been adapted to the digital world by be<strong>in</strong>g
made mach<strong>in</strong>e actionable. Other problems <strong>in</strong>clude the fact that most scholarship is still s<strong>in</strong>gle authored,
the TLG provides digital texts without any critical commentary, and most major new critical editions
have copyrights that rema<strong>in</strong> with their publisher, thus lead<strong>in</strong>g to an overreliance on the TLG.
Nonetheless, Crane, Seales, and Terras ma<strong>in</strong>ta<strong>in</strong> that a cyber<strong>in</strong>frastructure for philology and classics is
slowly emerg<strong>in</strong>g and builds upon three earlier “stages of digital classics: <strong>in</strong>cunabular projects, which
reta<strong>in</strong> the assumptions of pr<strong>in</strong>t culture, knowledge bases produced by small, centralized projects, and
digital communities, which allow many contributors to collaborate with m<strong>in</strong>imal technical expertise.”
For digital <strong>in</strong>cunabula, the TLG and the Bryn Mawr Classical Review are listed, the PDL is suggested
as a knowledge base, and the Stoa Consortium is a model digital community. More important, the
authors contend that these three classes of projects reflect three separate sources of energy:
“<strong>in</strong>dustrialized processes of mass digitization and of general algorithms, the specialized production of
doma<strong>in</strong> specific, mach<strong>in</strong>e actionable knowledge, and the generalized ability for many different
<strong>in</strong>dividuals to contribute.” The authors posit that when these three sources <strong>in</strong>teract, they provide a new
digital environment that makes possible ePhilology, eClassics, and cyber<strong>in</strong>frastructure. Yet at the same
time, they note that our current <strong>in</strong>frastructure is not yet at this stage:
The <strong>in</strong>frastructure of 2008 forces researchers <strong>in</strong> classics and <strong>in</strong> the humanities to develop
autonomous, largely isolated, resources. We cannot apply any analysis to data that is not
accessible. We need, at the least, to be able gather the data that is available today and, second,
to ensure that we can retrieve the same data <strong>in</strong> 2050 or 2110 that we retrieve <strong>in</strong> 2010. … We
need digital libraries that may be physically distributed <strong>in</strong> different parts of the world but that
act as a s<strong>in</strong>gle unit. … (Crane, Seales, and Terras 2009).
This quote illustrates the cont<strong>in</strong>u<strong>in</strong>g challenges of limited access to primary sources and secondary
scholarship, susta<strong>in</strong>able digital preservation, and creat<strong>in</strong>g an <strong>in</strong>tegrated user search<strong>in</strong>g experience
641 The importance of digital reference works <strong>in</strong> an <strong>in</strong>tegrated research environment has also been recognized by de la Flor et al. (2010a) <strong>in</strong> their discussion
of develop<strong>in</strong>g the VRE-SDM: “Moreover, classicists frequently reference other material such as prior translations, dictionaries of Roman names and
historical documents, whilst exam<strong>in</strong><strong>in</strong>g a manuscript. It would therefore be useful to be able to juxtapose the texts and notes they are work<strong>in</strong>g on with
other paper and electronic materials, <strong>in</strong>clud<strong>in</strong>g be<strong>in</strong>g able to view partial transcriptions of the text alongside an image.”