A faculty-led team has received an $814,000 grant from the Andrew Mellon Foundation to launch a new online system for editing ancient Greek and Latin texts preserved on papyrus.
The team is headed by Joshua Sosin, associate professor of classical studies, and Deborah Jakubs, University librarian and vice provost for library affairs. Over the next year, Sosin, Jakubs and a team of approximately 12 researchers hope to design a program that will integrate ancient text databases from universities across the globe, Sosin said.
The Duke Databank of Documentary Papyri, which contains more than 50,000 published texts, is currently the University's primary collection of ancient documents preserved on different media, according to a University release. This vast compilation, however, can only be edited by Sosin and the few other scholars to whom he grants permission, he said.
Currently, since 1997, anyone can browse and explore the collections. The new editing technology would change this limited access, allowing any Internet user comment on, emend, or add to ancient texts as well as translations and images in a "Wiki-like fashion," Sosin said.
Once completed, the collaborative online program will include documents from the Duke Databank as well as from collections from Columbia University and the University of Heidelberg in Germany, according to the statement. Duke researchers are also working with the University of Kentucky and New York University to develop the editing technology.
Sosin anticipates that the expansion of access to these documents will help to connect the subfields of classical studies.
"We will start to pick away at the walls that separate disciplines of classics," he said.
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