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directory of more than 2,100 cataloged Internet resources created by UB Heidelberg. This resource
provides access to “Classical Archaeological, Ancient Near Eastern and Egyptological websites,”
<strong>in</strong>clud<strong>in</strong>g subject portals, databases of images, mail<strong>in</strong>g lists, and discussion forums. One useful feature
is that this site provides a “full-text search” of the websites it has cataloged, rather than just a search of
the metadata of the resource descriptions. Interfaces to this website are available <strong>in</strong> English and
German.
One of the most extensive resources that provides coverage of multiple discipl<strong>in</strong>es with<strong>in</strong> classics is
Propylaeum: A Virtual Library of Classical Studies. 37 This subject portal 38 encompasses eight areas of
classical studies: Egyptology, Ancient History, Ancient Near Eastern Studies, Byzant<strong>in</strong>e Studies,
Classical Archaeology, Classical Philology, Medieval and Neo-Lat<strong>in</strong> Philology, and Pre- and Early
History. The entire collection of multidiscipl<strong>in</strong>ary resources can be searched at one time or a full list of
resources for <strong>in</strong>dividual discipl<strong>in</strong>es can be browsed. Each subject has its own subportal that <strong>in</strong>cludes a
def<strong>in</strong>ition of the subject, a list of specialist library catalogs, new acquisitions for partner collections, a
list of traditional and e-journals, a list of subject databases and digital collections, l<strong>in</strong>ks to more general
Internet resources, and a list of specialized academic and research services. Six academic and museum
project partners, <strong>in</strong>clud<strong>in</strong>g the Bavarian State Library (Munich) and the Institute of Classical Philology
at the Humboldt University, Berl<strong>in</strong>, are <strong>in</strong>volved <strong>in</strong> develop<strong>in</strong>g and ma<strong>in</strong>ta<strong>in</strong><strong>in</strong>g this academic portal.
F<strong>in</strong>ally, DAPHNE (Data <strong>in</strong> Archaeology, Prehistory and History on the Net) 39 is a freely available
portal that provides a s<strong>in</strong>gle po<strong>in</strong>t of access to subject-oriented bibliographic databases <strong>in</strong> prehistory,
protohistory, archaeology, and the sciences of antiquity, until about 1000 AD. DAPHNE comb<strong>in</strong>es
resources from three French databases: BAHR (Bullet<strong>in</strong> Analytique d’histoire Roma<strong>in</strong>e), FRANCIS,
and FRANTIQ-CCI. Users of DAPHNE can search across the bibliographic records <strong>in</strong> these databases
<strong>in</strong> Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish.
Document Analysis, Recognition, and Optical Character Recognition for Historical
Languages
While the major classical digital libraries described above support search<strong>in</strong>g across their collections <strong>in</strong>
the orig<strong>in</strong>al languages such as Lat<strong>in</strong> and Greek, implement<strong>in</strong>g such techniques <strong>in</strong> a scalable manner for
ever-grow<strong>in</strong>g and mass-digitized collections is a far more challeng<strong>in</strong>g task. Conventional OCR
systems have a limited ability to work with historical languages such as Lat<strong>in</strong>, but languages such as
Greek and Sanskrit are even more problematic. Special document-recognition-and-analysis systems
have been developed to deal with many of the issues these languages present, and the research
literature on historical document analysis and recognition is extensive. 40 Some research is start<strong>in</strong>g to
explore how technologies that have been developed might be used to solve problems across historical
languages or types of object, whether it is an <strong>in</strong>scription, a papyrus, or a palimpsest. 41 This section
summarizes the use of document analysis and OCR technologies to support <strong>in</strong>formation access to
documents <strong>in</strong> classical languages and dialects such as ancient Greek, Lat<strong>in</strong>, Sanskrit, Sumerian, and
Syriac.
37 http://www.propylaeum.de/<strong>in</strong>terdiscipl<strong>in</strong>ary.html
38 It also searches both KIRKE and SISYPHOS.
39 http://www.daphne.cnrs.fr/daphne/search.html;jsessionid=5636B7A687E5E01429A1FD79CC88168B
40 A full review of this literature is beyond the scope of this paper. For some recent overviews <strong>in</strong> terms of digital libraries see Sankar et al. (2006) and
Choudhury et al. (2006).
41 A conference held <strong>in</strong> 2010, “Digital Imag<strong>in</strong>g of Ancient Textual Heritage: Technological Challenges and
Solutions”(http://www.eikonopoiia.org/home.html) explored these issues <strong>in</strong> depth, and the full proceed<strong>in</strong>gs are available onl<strong>in</strong>e
(http://www.eikonopoiia.org/files/Eikonopoiia-2010-Proceed<strong>in</strong>gs.pdf). For a multil<strong>in</strong>gual approach to manuscripts, see Leydier et al. (2009)