Digital Epigraphy on the World-Wide Web
by Tom Elliott | 09/28/2015
Thanks to a gift from the Classics Conclave, ISAW has updated and expanded a public-domain bibliography of on-line resources for the discovery, publication, study, and teaching of epigraphy.
Dubbed EpiDig (for "Epigraphy + Digital"), this collaborative bibliography is managed and published via a shared group on the Zotero.org citation management website. Working under the direction of Tom Elliott, ISAW's Associate Director for Digital Programs, Nicholas Goldrosen conducted a complete review and update of the bibliography. A rising senior at Hunter College High School in New York, Goldrosen first reviewed every existing entry in the bibliography for accuracy and currency against each "live" on-line resource and then collated the contents of the bibliography against a number of other lists to ensure completeness (see further, below). Pages that have disappeared from the web are now tagged for further investigation. In coming months, ISAW and its partners will continue efforts to catalog similar digital resources on the web. A follow-on project will make contact with the authors and publishers of these resources in an effort to assess data management and digital preservation plans for each, with a view toward ensuring long-term availability for ISAW and its affiliates world-wide.Started by Elliott in 2013, the EpiDig bibliography is now jointly curated by 16 volunteers (listed on the Zotero group page). It takes inspiration and incorporates data from earlier efforts, including:
- Elliott's own Links to Web-based Epigraphical Resources (American Society of Greek and Latin Epigraphy, 1998-2007);
- An unpublished survey conducted by Silvio Panciera and other members of the "Épigraphie et Informatique" commission of the Association Internationale d'Épigraphie Grecque et Latine (1997-2003); and
- The "Epigraphy" category in The Digital Classicist Wiki.
Elliott has written recently about the facility and use of digital resources for Roman epigraphy in: The Oxford Handbook of Roman Epigraphy, C. Bruun and J. Edmondson (eds.), 2014, pages 78–85 [paywalled digital version].Corrections and suggested additions to EpiDig should be emailed to tom.elliott@nyu.edu.