The paper describes the main challenges faced, and the solutions adopted in the frame of the project DASI - Digital Archive for the study of pre-Islamic Arabian inscriptions. In particular, the methodological and technological issues emerged in the conversion from a domain-specific text-based project of digital edition of an epigraphic corpus, to an objective-driven archive for the study and dissemination of inscriptions in different languages and scripts are discussed. With a view to keeping pace with, and possibly fostering reasoning on best practices in the community of digital epigraphers beyond each specific cultural/linguistic domain, special attention is devoted to: the modelling of data and encoding (XML annotation vs database approach; the conceptual model for the valorization of the material aspect of the epigraph; the textual encoding for critical editions); interoperability (pros and cons of compliance to standards; harmonization of metadata; openness; semantic interoperability); lexicography (tools for under-resourced languages; translations).
The Infonet project aimed to produce printed versions of the Iconclass schedules, bibliography, and the alphabetic index. The keywords, originally handpicked for the alphabetic index, are shown in italics. As the Decimal Index of the Art of the Low Countries (DIAL) was first of all a collection of photocards, ordered by subject – that is, Iconclass notation – the identification of multiple subjects in the same picture necessitated multiple prints. The Infonet brief, the DIAL, and the general introduction to the first Iconclass volume described an elaborate system of cross-references that Henri Van de Waal hoped would be “in itself a tool for iconographic research. The Iconclass system in its unabridged form can be of great use for such a task”. When Van de Waal wrote this, in 1968, using Iconclass in a computerized format was not yet a realistic option, and working with a limitless number of digital reproductions of works of art was not even a fantasy.
EDV (Epigraphic Database Vernacular) is a database collecting the vernacular inscriptions produced in Italy from the late Medieval to the Early Modern Age, and is a part of the EAGLE and IDEA projects. The present contribution illustrates the criteria used for the description and indexing of all inscriptions that record public script in language(s) other than Latin. The material is very varied as regards language, script, provenance, support and function. The author discusses briefly the editorial criteria that may prove most appropriate for its publication.
Textual databases enable precise linguistic comparisons and the study of chronological developments of languages in the geographic space and help safeguard endangered world heritage. In this article, we describe an ongoing study of planning and designing a catalogue of 400 Phoenician‑Punic inscriptions and examine strategies of catalogue standardization and implementation, tagging and annotation systems, digital sustainability and cost‑effectiveness. The database will be searchable (of metadata and textual data), linked, and open on the network.
This webliography includes a selection of the online resources that have been referenced within the papers. Among them, only those useful to approach digital epigraphy, in content and method, have been selected. Each resource is described through the core elements of the Dublin Core Matadata Initiative. Therefore, especially indications on subjects, and chronological and geographic coverage are general, not domain-specific.
Hesperia. Banco de datos de lenguas paleohispánicas and AELAW. Ancient European Languages and Writings are two narrowly linked projects whose common feature is their general aim: cataloguing the documents written in the ancient languages of Europe (8th cent. BCE–5th cent. CE) excluding Latin, Greek, and Phoenician. Although both projects are closely linked, BDHesp has a track record of twenty years, while AELAW has been active for only two and a half years. In this paper, where we have especially focused on BDHesp, we summarize the problems that arose during the encoding of Palaeohispanic languages, written in multiple writing systems and their variants, and the solutions addressed. We also present the promising tools that have been developed in BDHesp to make significant progress in our understanding of Palaeohispanic languages and writings. Lastly, we introduce AELAW network and its two databases, its aims and what we intend to accomplish in the future.
Digital editions of ancient texts and objects follow the nineteenth–twentieth century tradition of academic editing, but are able to be more explicit and accessible than their print analogues. The use of digital standards such as EpiDoc and Linked Open Data, that emphasise interoperability, linking and sharing, enables—we shall argue, obliges—the scholarly editor to make the digital publication open, accessible, transparent and explicit. We discuss three axes of openness: 1. The edition encodes dimensions and physical condition of the inscribed object, as well as photographs and other imagery, and should include translations to modern languages, rather than assuming fluency. 2. Contextual and procedural metadata include the origins of scholarly work, permissions, funding, influences on academic decision-making, material and intellectual property, trafficking, ethics, authenticity and archaeological context. 3. The digital standards and code implementing them, enabling interoperability among editions and projects, and depend on consistency and accessible documentation of practices, guidelines and customisations. Standards benefit from training in scholarly and digital methods, and the nurturing of a community to preserve and encourage the sustainable re-use of standards and editions. Ancient text-bearing objects need to be treated as material artefacts as well as the bearers of (sometimes abstract or immaterial) strings of historical text. All elements of the publication of both object and text are interpretive constructs. It is essential that we not neglect any of the material or immaterial information in all of these components, in our scholarly quest to make them explicit, interoperable and machine actionable.