Digital Epigraphy in 2022: A Report from the Scoping Survey of the FAIR Epigraphy Project

Dear fellow epigraphers,

we are excited to share the results of a survey circulated on behalf of FAIR Epigraphy earlier this year! We have just published the report “Digital Epigraphy in 2022: A Report from the Scoping Survey of the FAIR Epigraphy Project” on Zenodo.

You can access the report either as an interactive HTML version  or download the report as a PDF.

We have gathered responses from all our partners and 27 epigraphic projects that provide a representative sample of the discipline in 2022.

Based on the responses, we plan to undertake several in-depth interviews with our partners to confirm some of our assumptions and to draft a concrete plan for the following three years. However, it is clear from the survey responses, that we should direct our attention to three main tasks:

1. implementing and hosting standards for epigraphic vocabularies (e.g. inscription type, material, object etc.) 2. implementing and hosting standards for bibliographical records (e.g. stable and unique records for all major epigraphic editions) 3. building a platform for FAIR and Open Epigraphy on the infrastructure provided by the University of Oxford (CSAD), that will function as an information hub, providing not only training and good practice examples, but also hosting the resources and tools.

We hope to run a similar survey annually to track any progress within the discipline and closely monitor changing needs of individual projects in digital epigraphy.

Lastly, we would like to invite you for an informal evening of digital epigraphy, organised by FAIR Epigraphy and held at CIEGL XVII in Bordeaux on Thursday 1 Sep 2022 (the exact location will be specified shortly before the event).

With best wishes,

FAIR Epigraphy team
Imran Asif, Petra Heřmánková, Marietta Horster, Jonathan Prag
 
The FAIR Epigraphy Project https://www.csad.ox.ac.uk/fair-epigraphy