Digital Epigraphy and
Publication
Gabriel Bodard
King’s College London
(Many of these slides taken from
http://wiki.digitalclassicist.org/EpiDoc_Summer_School)
Electronic Publication
•
•
•
•
•
•
Accessibility (cost, volume,
circulation)
Scale (book size, unit cost of disc
space)
Media (colour images, video,
interactive)
Hypertext (internal/external/dynamic)
Potential to update continuously (+/-)
Iterative research tool
Accessibility
•
Free access with internet collection
o not everyone has good library
ƒ e.g. Eastern Europe
o not everyone has internet access
ƒ (but cf. Negroponte)
cf. Perseus, < 500 000 page views/month
•
Access outside of academia
•
Long-term sustainability
•
Scale
•
No limitation on page count
•
No limit on images
•
multiple tables of content
o indices, appendices ...
•
bibliography in full
o abbreviations expanded
Media
•
Images
o Colour images
•
Multimedia
o animations
o virtual reality
o audio / video
•
Interactive media
o walk-through / fly-through
o "game" technologies
Hypertext
•
•
Internal:
o link from ToC / indices to texts
o crossreferences between texts
o link to/from appendices
o link to footnotes
o thumbnails to images
o dynamic maps
ƒ they're great
External:
o bibliographic refs
o other inscriptions (PHI, EAGLE, etc.)
o dynamic links (source code available)
Updates
•
Corrections
o Updates
o RSS feed of additions/changes
o user comments/suggestions
•
*But*: stability of citation
o periodic new editions?
o permanent URLs
o traceable history etc.
Iterative research (Open Source)
•
Generated indices can be created before finished
product
•
XML checking tools
•
Source code available for future editions
o CC-by license
•
Transparency
o core tenet of academic publication
o "replicable results"
The Epigrapher is Encoder
•
Leiden/Krummrey-Panciera/Petrae
o
o
o
•
•
•
Well documented
Arbitrary
Strict set of sigla
Interpretive edition
Diplomatic transcription
Apparatus Criticus
Control your own work
•
•
Epigraphers design and mastermind
corpus
Representations are interpretations:
o ToCs, Indices, Concordances
o Editions
o Search interfaces
•
Technology works for us (not other
way around)
What you need to learn
•
•
Basic XML
EpiDoc distinctions
o ( = Leiden and/or EAGLE)
•
Enough to review/correct texts:
o As edited by others
o As converted by tools
What you need to do
•
Engage with EpiDoc community
o Online fora, mailing lists, conferences
•
Become familiar with reference
sources
o EpiDoc Guidelines
o Documentation wikis
o SourceForge
Why this is not difficult
•
You have already mastered:
o Ancient history
o Greek and Latin
o Palaeography
o Multiple modern languages
o Leiden conventions
o Publishers’ notations and requirements