The Stoa Consortium

On the day when the Browne Report proposes cutting all government funding for teaching in the Arts and Humanities in the name of making the British university sector “more competitive”, there has of course been much online discussion (notably on Twitter) of how to (and indeed whether we should have to) justify the arts and humanities in a shrinking academic economy. Several important opinion pieces have been cited:

• ‘That Full Complement of Riches’ (2004)
• Will the Humanities Save us? (2008)
• The value of higher education in the arts and humanities (2009)

For my part, the answer is very simply that the reason society should value a strong Arts and Humanities culture is not because of any measurable “value” in economic terms (although cases can and are being made for that), but because a civilized society benefits from having a large number of educated citizens with as varied backgrounds as possible who are able to (and in the habit of) critically examine an arbitrary statement or text.

I’m willing to concede that society gets very little (if any) measurable gain from my study of the role of marginalized women in Ancient Greek narratives of magic. But the fact that I spent so much time studying anything that closely makes me better able to critique the rhetoric of a politician, or to analyze the social impact of a controversial television programme (and I’m no scholar of political science or media studies, both of whom have important roles to play there). In short, my liberal arts education has made me a better citizen, and the students I have been involved in the teaching of likewise.

Others can and have made better cases than this, and I hope will continue to do so, in the comments here and elsewhere. This may not be an especially convincing argument for politicians, but it is, in my opinion, the truth.

I’m writing to bring readers’ attention to a series of pages that is coming together on the Digital Classicist wiki under the rubric “Citation in digital scholarship” (category). I take responsibility/blame for initiating the project, but it has already benefitted from input by Matteo Romanello (author of CRefEx) and from comments by my colleagues at NYU’s Institute for the Study of the Ancient World. You’ll also see the influence of the Canonical Text Services.

A slight preview of what you’ll find there and of where this all might go:

1. The goal is to provide a robust and simple convention for indicating that citations are present. How robust? How simple? At a bare minimum, just wrap a citation in ‘<a class=”citation” href=”http://example.org”>…</a>’. That will distinguish intellectually significant citations from other links (such as to a home page for the hosting project). I cribbed the  ’class=”citation”‘ string from Matteo’s articles cited at the bottom of the wiki page. Please also consider adding a ‘title’ and ‘lang’ attribute as described.
2. We are also interested in encouraging convergence on best practices for communicating information about the entities being cited and about the nature of the citation itself:
   1. There is a page “Citations with added RDFa” that suggests conventions for using RDFa to add markup. It encourages use of Dublin Core terms.
   2. Matteo has begun a page “Citations with CTS and Microformats“. CTS, developed by Neel Smith and Chris Blackwell, is important by way of its potential to provide stable URIs to well-known texts.

   Merging these conventions is of ongoing interest. And they do illustrate that one goal is to converge on best practices that are extendable and not in unnecessary conflict with existing work.

3. While it isn’t represented on the wiki yet, I intend to start a javascript library that will identify citations in a page (e.g. jQuery’s “$(‘.citation’)” ) in order to present information about, along with options for following, a particular citation. Or to list and map all the dc:Location’s cited in a text. Etc.
4. Closing the loop: this work overlaps with a meeting held by the ISAW Digital Projects Team in NYC last week. The preliminary result is a tool for managing URIs in a shared bibliographic infrastructure. This is one example of an entity that can produce embeddable markup conforming to the ‘class=”citation”‘ convention. Such markup would be consumable by the planned js library. Any project that produces stable URIs can have an “Embed a link to here.” (vel sim) widget that produces conforming html for authors to re-use.

I’m grateful to Gabriel Bodard for letting me use the Digital Classicist wiki to start these pages and for encouraging me to summarize here. The effort is inspired by the observation that a little bit of common documentation, sharing, and tool building can lead to big wins for users and developers, as well as to greater interoperability for our citation practices going forward.

Comments here are very welcome.

New York University
Programmer/Analyst

New York University’s Division of the Libraries seeks a Programmer/Analyst to work on the “Papyrological Navigator” (http://papyri.info) and associated systems. Papyri.info is a web-based research portal that provides scholars worldwide with the ability to search, browse and collaboratively edit texts, transcriptions, images and metadata relating to ancient texts on papyri, pottery fragments and other material. The incumbent will work closely with the Project Coordinator and with scholars involved in the project at NYU’s Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, Duke University, the University of Kentucky and the University of Heidelberg, as well as with NYU Digital Library Technology staff.

The incumbent’s initial responsibilities will include: close collaboration with project team members to enhance and extend a robust production environment at NYU for the ongoing ingest and processing of new and updated text transcriptions, metadata and digital images; performing both analysis and programming of any required changes or enhancements to current PN applications.

Candidates should have the following skills:

• Bachelor’s degree in computer or information science and 3 years of relevant experience or equivalent combination
• Must include experience developing web applications using Java
• Demonstrated knowledge of Java, Javascript, Tomcat, Saxon, Lucene, Apache, SQL, XML, XSLT
• Experience with metadata standards (e.g. TEI, EpiDoc)
• Experience working in Unix/Linux environments
• Preferred: Experience with Apache Solr, RDF triple stores (e.g. Mulgara), Clojure
• Preferred: Experience designing, building, and deploying distributed systems
• Preferred: Experience working with non-Roman Unicode-based textual data (esp. Greek)
• Excellent communication and analytical skills

Applicants should submit resume and cover letter, which reflects how applicant’s education and experience match the job requirements.

NYU offers a competitive salary and superior benefit package, which includes tuition benefits for self and eligible family members, generous vacation, medical, dental, and retirement plans. For more information about working at NYU visit our website at: www.nyucareers.com.

To apply:

To apply for this position online, visit
http://www.nyucareers.com/applicants/Central?quickFind=52507

NYU is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer.

[Note: this is part of a paper written after a conference on Digital Lexicography at the University of Cambridge in 2002, and was scheduled to appear in the print publication of the proceedings. As the publication never took place, and the paper is now rather too out of date to publish by traditional means without a lot more work, I'm posting here under a Creative Commons Attribution license that part of it (a little more than a third of the length) that might still be of some small interest. No significant changes have been made to this material since 2003 (e.g. code examples use TEI P4).]

Introduction

In this paper I discuss the digital markup of epigraphic texts, using the Aphrodisias in Late Antiquity 2004 electronic publication as an example corpus. I shall consider some of the uses to which the original electronic source code can be put, which includes the compiling of (or contributing to) indices and databases external to the original, limited project. Such external uses might include an onomastic database, a gazetteer of place names, or a digital lexicon, to suggest only three.

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Seen in a post, on various lists, by Fabian Reiter:

Liebe Kollegen,

im Rahmen des von der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft geförderten
Digitalisierungsprojektes der Berliner Papyrussammlung ist für 3 Jahre
die Stelle eines Fachinformatikers zu besetzen, vgl. die Ausschreibung
unter den folgenden Adresse:

http://hv.spk-berlin.de/deutsch/beruf_karriere/freie_stellen/museum/AeMP2-2010.pdf

As part of my PhD in Digital Humanities I’m working on a literature review of  publications related to the theme “Classics and Computers”.

I’m looking specifically at general surveys, studies and discussions about the history of the relationship between classics and computers, a disciplinary field that has recently emerged as Digital Classics.

However, as Tom Elliott pointed me out Alison Babeu (Perseus project) has recently published on CiteULike a much broader bibliography as “as part of an IMLS-funded planning project that’s looking a digital infrastructure needs for Classics (Perseus and CLIR are the co-recipients of the grant)”.

For the time being, in order to allow anyone with any interest in this to contribute I created a group on Zotero called digitalclassics. The group is open (i.e. my authorisation is not needed to join) so please join it and start contributing your entries to the list. I’m thinking in particular of publications that I have unintentionally neglected and/or publications in other languages that I was not aware of.

Currently, the entries in the Zotero Library are divided into two main categories: general studies and applications, where the latter is meant to host publications concerning specific applications Digital Classics-related. More subcategories may be added as long as we go further or members of the list can even add new ones by themselves.As soon as the bibliography will reach a reasonably stable shape I will update the page I have already created on the DigitalClassicist wiki.

I want to thank in advance the DigitalClassicist community for the support they have shown me on the list and for the entries they have started already contributing.

Posted on behalf of Marcus Dohnicht.

Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren,
liebe Kolleginnen und Kollegen,

der 14. Internationale Kongress für Griechische und Lateinische Epigraphik wird auf Einladung der Berlin-Brandenburgischen Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin in Verbindung mit dem Deutschen Archäologischen Institut vom 27. bis zum 31. August 2012 in Berlin stattfinden. Die Internetseite des Kongresses ist unter

http://www.congressus2012.de

zu erreichen. Über den jeweils neuesten Stand der Kongressvorbereitung wird mit einem Newsletter informiert werden. Bitte melden Sie uns unter

http://www.congressus2012.de/de/newsletter.html

dass Sie den Newsletter erhalten wollen; auf diese Weise erhalten wir auch ihre neueste E-Mail Adresse. Die Anmeldung für den Newsletter ist noch keine Anmeldung zum Kongress.

Wir wären Ihnen sehr dankbar, wenn Sie diese E-Mail an alle Interessenten und Institutionen weiterleiten würden, besonders an jüngere Kollegen und solche, die über keinen eigenen E-Mail-Anschluß verfügen. Falls diese uns entsprechend schreiben, werden wir ihnen die Informationen auf normalem postalischem Weg zusenden.

Wir bitten um Entschuldigung, falls Sie diese E-Mail mehrfach erhalten sollten.

In der Hoffnung, dass sehr viele von Ihnen unserer Einladung nachkommen, mit freundlichen Grüßen
Werner Eck

As noted here a few weeks ago, there is a remarkable number of panels on Digital Technology and the Tools of the Trade at the 26e Congrès international de papyrologie, which takes place this week in Geneva, Switzerland. Earlier this week I wrote to both the Digital Classicist and Papyrology lists asking if anyone was planning to blog or live-tweet these sessions. So far all that I’ve come across is:

• Alexandra Trachsel has reported on two papers on geographic databases and papyrology at her blog “Travelling with Demetrios of Skepsis”
• Tom Elliott tweeted earlier today that the SoSOL demo received a warm reception

If anyone else has or intends to blog the conference, or has notes on any of the technology sessions that could be turned into a short report, please post a link in the comments or get in touch.

New online catalogue of Roman coins at the British Museum.

A catalogue of the Roman Republican Coins in the British Museum, with descriptions and chronology based on M.H. Crawford, Roman Republican Coinage (1974) – this catalogue brings together over 12,000 coins. It aims to provide an introduction to the coinage, the history of the Museum collection and an aid to the identification of coin types.

Entries are generated directly from our collection database and might change as Museum curators discover more about the objects. This format aims to provide a ‘living’ catalogue so its contents can be adapted to reflect current research.

Digitising Cultural Heritage

British Museum: Stevenson Lecture Theatre.
Saturday 4th September 2010, 09:55 – 16:30

Digital technology has revolutionised modern work- and social life. It is also transforming cultural heritage management. The power to store, organise and distribute vast quantities of complex data makes possible today things that only 20 years ago were dreams. This study day brings together a selection of projects that embrace the potential of the digital world to broaden and enrich access to mankind’s shared cultural heritage.

The British Museum’s founding philosophy–free access for ‘all studious and curious Persons’–today means not just free entry to the museum in Bloomsbury, but also free access to the collection online. An increasing community of institutions and projects share this philosophy, and the past is no longer such a foreign country.

Programme:
Read the rest of this entry »

Marco Büchler asked me to post the following notice:

Workshop: eHumanities – How does computer science benefit?
Organiser: Prof. Gerhard Heyer and Marco Büchler (Natural Language Processing / CS, University of Leipzig)

SPECIAL HINT:
————————–
The workshop is compiled NOT only by presentations of computer scientists BUT researchers from humanities and infrastructure as well. HUMANISTS ARE VERY WELCOME!!!

Dates:
———
Conference Sept. 27th – Oct. 1st, 2010
eHumanities workshop: Thursday Sept. 30th.

Registration details:
——————————–
**Early bird registration:  July 30th, 2010**
Registration page: http://www.informatik2010.de/480.html

Workshop description:
————————————
In recent years the text-based humanities and social sciences experienced a synthesis between the increasing availability of digitized texts and algorithms from the fields of information retrieval and text mining that resulted in novel tools for text processing and analysis, and enabled entirely new questions and innovative methodologies.

The goal of this workshop is to investigate which consequences and potentials for computer science have emerged in turn from the digitization of the social sciences and humanities.

Read the rest of this entry »

(Thanks to Gregg Schwendner for posting the papyrological congress programme at What’s New in Papyrology.)

Thursday August 19th, morning
88. DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY AND TOOLS OF THE TRADE I Adam Bülow-Jacobsen  presiding
89. Herwig Maehler Die Zukunft der griechischen Papyrologie
90. Bart Van Beek Papyri in bits & bytes – electronic texts and how to use them
91. Marius Gerhardt Papyrus Portal Deutschland

DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY AND TOOLS OF THE TRADE I Roger Bagnall  presiding
101. Reinhold Scholl Textmining  und Papyri
102. Herbert Verreth Topography of Egypt online

107. Joshua Sosin / James Cowey Digital papyrology : a new platform for collaborative control of DDbDP, HGV, and APIS data Plenary session in Room MR080 (1 hour)

Friday August 20th, morning
DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY AND TOOLS OF THE TRADE II Rodney Ast presiding
133. Giovanna Menci Utilità di un database di alfabeti per lo studio della scrittura greca dei papiri
134. Marie-Hélène Marganne Les extensions du fichier Mertens-Pack3 du CEDOP AL
135. Robert Kraft Imaging the papyri collection at the University of Pennsylvania Museum (Philadelphia PA, USA)

DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY AND TOOLS OF THE TRADE III James Cowey presiding
146. Roger T. Macfarlane / Stephen M. Bay Multi-Spectral Imaging and Papyrology : Advantages and Limitations
147. Adam Bülow-Jacobsen Digital infrared photography of papyri and ostraca

So this astonishingly rich programme of digital topics at the International Papyrological Congress this year makes me wonder: what would it take to get this much digital interest at a major epigraphic meeting, or the annual Classics meetings, for that matter? (A couple of Digital Classicist panels at recent APA/AIA and CA conferences notwithstanding–there’s nothing as diverse and in-the-wild as the above at any Classics conference I’ve been to in recent years.) Can we do anything about this with top-down encouragement, or does it have to be a natural ground-swell? Or is papyrology just a naturally more technical subdiscipline than the rest of Classics?

Christopher Blackwell is with a team now at Lichfield scanning St Chad’s Gospel, and a Wycliffe Bible too. He’s blogging the experience:

http://nobleswineherd.blogspot.com/2010/06/litchfield.html

And yes, the images will be released under a Creative Commons license.

Posted on behalf of Dhananjay Jagannathan:

In response to a recent call from a philosopher for better translations of ancient works online for the sake of his students (http://blog.davidhildebrand.org/2010/06/what-to-do-about-old-translations.html), I decided to launch a digital humanities project which will, I hope, result in a high-quality, freely available translation of Plato’s Protagoras (probably under a Creative Commons license). The basic principle is this: every day for a few months, I will post roughly a page of the dialogue on a blog (http://openprotagoras.wordpress.com/), side by side in Greek, in my own translation, and in Jowett’s classic 1871 translation that appears commonly online. I’ve invited readers to comment and offer suggestions to improve the translation. My goal is to communicate Plato in English the way readers of his would have interpreted his Greek, aiming to capture his range of styles (colloquial conversation on the street, philosophical debate, rhetorical displays, poetic analysis, and so on) in a contemporary idiom. The nature of the project requires a wide readership for its success, so I hope you will pass this along.

Best wishes,
Dhananjay Jagannathan
Balliol College
University of Oxford

Are there other, similar initiatives underway? It seems timely.

Closing date for applications: July 2, 2010.

The two lectureships will be joint appointments between the Department of Digital Humanities (formerly CCH) and the Centre for Culture, Media and Creative Industries at King’s College London. Demonstrated research interests across both areas are a requirement.

Further particulars and application information.

Full details and application form at UCL HR

Research Associate – Networked 3D Design Application for Museums, – Ref:1141523

UCL Department / Division
Museums and Collections
Specific unit / Sub department
The Petrie Museum
Grade: 7
Hours: Full Time
Salary: (inclusive of London allowance) £31,778-£38,441 per annum

Duties and Responsibilities
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Digital Classicist 2010 summer seminar programme
Institute of Classical Studies

Meetings are on Fridays at 16:30
in room STB9 (Stewart House)
Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU

*ALL WELCOME*
Seminars will be followed by refreshments

• Jun 4 Leif Isaksen (Southampton)
  Reading Between the Lines: unearthing structure in Ptolemy’s Geography
• Jun 11 Hafed Walda (King’s College London) and Charles Lequesne (RPS Group)
  Towards a National Inventory for Libyan Archaeology
• Jun 18 Timothy Hill (King’s College London)  
  After Prosopography? Data modelling, models of history, and new directions for a scholarly genre.
• Jun 25 Matteo Romanello (King’s College London)       
  Towards a Tool for the Automatic Extraction of Canonical References
• Jul 2 Mona Hess (University College London)  
  3D Colour Imaging For Cultural Heritage Artefacts
• Jul 16 Annemarie La Pensée (National Conservation Centre) and Françoise Rutland (World Museum Liverpool)
  Non-contact 3D laser scanning as a tool to aid identification and interpretation of archaeological artefacts: the case of a Middle Bronze Age Hittite Dice
• Jul 23 Mike Priddy (King’s College London)
  On-demand Virtual Research Environments: a case study from the Humanities
• Jul 30 Monica Berti (Torino) and Marco Büchler (Leipzig)
  Fragmentary Texts and Digital Collections of Fragmentary Authors
• Aug 6 Kathryn Piquette (University College London)
  Material Mediates Meaning: Exploring the artefactuality of writing utilising qualitative data analysis software
• Aug 13 Linda Spinazzè (Venice)
  Musisque Deoque. Developing new features: manuscripts tracing on the net

For more information on individual seminars and updates on the programme, see http://www.digitalclassicist.org/wip/wip2010.html

Deadline extended to May 15, see original call.

Forwarded for Charles Crowther:

Post-doctoral Research Assistant – Reflectance Transformation Imaging Systems for Ancient Documentary Artefacts (RTISAD)
Academic-related Grade 7, Salary: £28,983.00 – £35,646.00 pro rata per annum

The Reflectance Transformation Imaging Systems for Ancient Documentary Artefacts (RTISAD) project is seeking to appoint a Post-doctoral Research Assistant for a three-quarter-time, nine-month fixed term post from 1 June 2010 or as soon as possible thereafter. The project is funded by an Arts and Humanities Research Council Grant, under the Digital Equipment and Database Enhancement for Impact scheme. The person appointed will be responsible for organising a trial programme of photographing ancient documentary material using the Reflectance Transformance Imaging systems built by the project. Applicants should have a completed D.Phil, Ph.D or equivalent, together with a competence in cuneiform studies, and/or Greek and Latin papyrology and epigraphy, or another related discipline, and have proven IT skills.

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Chair and Head of Department

King’s College London – Department of Digital Humanities, Centre for Computing in the Humanities

The Centre for Computing in the Humanities (CCH), King’s College London is looking for a new Chair and Head of Department to succeed Harold Short, the founding Director and Head of Department, who will be retiring in September 2010 after 22 years in the College.

CCH is recognized as an international leader in the application of technology in research in the arts and humanities. It is an academic department in the School of Arts and Humanities, and operates on a collaborative basis across discipline, institutional and national boundaries. It is responsible for a PhD programme and three MA programmes and for teaching at undergraduate level. It has a particular focus on collaborative research, and at any one time is engaged in 30 or more research projects. These cover a wide range of humanities disciplines, including medieval studies, history, literature and linguistics, art history and music, and also include a number of more general information management projects in both humanities and the social sciences. In collaboration with its research partners, it has generated over £17 million in research grants over the past 7 years.

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We are happy to announce the publication of the Digital Classicist volume:
Digital Research in the Study of Classical Antiquity

This collection is based on presentations given at the Digital Classicist seminars in 2007, our various conference panels of that year and some that were specially commissioned.

Digital Research in the Study of Classical Antiquity, edited by Gabriel Bodard (King’s College London, UK) and Simon Mahony (University College London, UK), Ashgate 2010, ISBN 978-0-7546-7773-4 £ 55.00

For full details and the publishers blurb, see:
http://www.ashgate.com/isbn/9780754677734

A copy of the publishers’ promotional flyer can be downloaded here, email it to your friends and libraries.

Note: there is a 20% discount until 31st August if you order online and quote the reference on the flyer.

Posted on behalf of Carl Vogel at TCD – not a position in classics, but could be interesting for digital classicist types.

[Apologies for multiple postings; please circulate as appropriate.]

2 Phd Positions involving speech and text analysis are open within TCD.

http://www.tcd.ie/Graduate_Studies/InnovationBursaries/

The bursaries include payment of fees, some research costs, and a stipend of 16K per annum. The funding covers four years of study within a structured PhD program.  This funding is equivalent to that provided by IRCSET awards.

Position 1: Speaking the 1641 Depositions

This innovative project under the theme of “Digital Humanities and Sustainable Records” will attract candidates who are interested in independent and advanced research linking speech synthesis and important historical documents. It will involve application of advanced linguistic and statistical methods, using the latest tools and technologies, for the analysis and rendering into speech of large bodies of annotated historical text. The project will last for four years and research costs, a stipend, and coverage of fees, etc., will be offered. Successful applicants will have a background in either history or computing. They will have keen analytical skills and will join a small team of researchers with similar interests in the way
people speak and present information. They will be especially interested in expressing personality through speech synthesis, and in attempting to render historical texts in order to express character through the synthesised voices.

Further details:
http://www.tcd.ie/Graduate_Studies/InnovationBursaries/
Apply for course:  www.pac.ie/tcd (code — TRB01)

Position 2: Technology for harmonising interpersonal communication

We explore how contemporary modes of interaction, typically at a distance via electronic devices, can be supplemented to support the sorts of information flow and inference that evolution has endowed humans sensitivity to in face-to-face communications. The research entails that various prototype applications be constructed, deployed and analyzed. A successful candidate will have demonstrable expertise in computer programming, preferably with experience of end-user application delivery. The candidate will be engaged in the delivery of software alongside performance of quantitative and qualitative analysis of linguistic data. The background research topic is in discerning sentiment and other non-propositional content of textual communications (such as text messages) and projecting the same through appropriate vocal synthesis. Prior expertise in text and dialogue analysis as well as speech synthesis will be an advantage. Candidates should be comfortable with computational theoretical frameworks for syntax and formal semantics, as well as statistically oriented approaches to language analysis.

Further details:
http://www.tcd.ie/Graduate_Studies/InnovationBursaries/
Apply for course: www.pac.ie/tcd (code — TRB08)

———————-

Closing date for applications:
Friday 9th April 2010

Applications should be made online through www.pac.ie/tcd

Registration for the 2010 Digital Humanities conference (July 7-10, 2010, King’s College London) is now open (http://dh2010.cch.kcl.ac.uk/registration.html).

In addition to the conference programme, seven workshops are offered between July 5-7. All are free for conference attendees.

• Access to the Grid: Interfacing the Humanities with Grid technologies (Stuart Dunn)
• Text Mining in the Digital Humanities (Marco Buechler et al., eAQUA Project)
• Service-Oriented Computing in the Humanities (Nicolas Gold et al.)
• Content, Compliance, Collaboration and Complexity: Creating and Sustaining Information (Joanne Evans et al.)
• Designing a Digital Humanities Lab (Angela Veomett et al.)
• Peer Reviewing Digital Archives: the NINES model (Dana Wheeles et al.)
• Introduction to Text Analysis using JiTR and Voyeur (Stéfan Sinclair et al.)

To find out more about these workshops, see Workshop Programme.

Call for proposals
2010 Annual Meeting of the TEI Consortium

TEI Applied: Digital Texts and Language Resources

http://ling.unizd.hr/~tei2010/

• Meeting dates: Thu 11 November to Sun 14 November, 2010
• Workshop dates: Mon 08 November to Wed 10 November, 2010

The Program Committee of the 2010 Annual Meeting of the Text Encoding Initiative Consortium invites individual paper proposals, panel sessions, poster sessions, and tool demonstrations particularly, but not exclusively, on digital texts, language resources and any topic that applies TEI to its research.
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It used to be said, especially by the Internet’s nay-sayers, that the insuperable barrier to publishing and citing online is that links are never stable. The number of pages that appear and disappear every day means that even a year-old list of sites is likely to contain significant link rot. There is a significant movement to promote both stable and cool URLs (see for example [van Kesteren 2004] and [Berners-Lee 1998]), and most of those of us who publish online take great pains to have URLs that are both predictable and will not need to change.

For example, we recently published The Inscritions of Roman Tripolitania, a digital edition based very closely on the 1952 printed volume by Reynolds and Ward-Perkins, at:

• http://irt.kcl.ac.uk/irt2009/

Because this is largely a reprint, there is obviously more work to be done, and we hope to add a new edition fairly soon (incorporating, for example, Arabic translation and new digital photographs). When we do so, the new site will be labeled “irt2011″ or similar, all internal links will include this date, and the old site will not need to be removed or renamed. No links will be broken in this process.

Similarly, good electronic journals have URLs that reflect date and/or issue number in the directory structure:

• http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/journal/4/
• http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/3/1/

Again we can see that they don’t need to change when new issues come along or the site is restructured. Additionally, you can guess from these URLs what the address of DM issue 5, or DHQ issue 4.2, would be. Additionally, I can remember (or guess) the URLs of individual papers within DM by their authors’ surnames. I strongly suspect that in a year and in ten years, these URLs will still work.

All of which makes is especially surprising that an institution like the Center for Hellenic Studies, which is in so many ways a field-leader and standard-setter in Digital Humanities matters, has a website whose URLs seem to be generated by a content management system. These URLs (including that of their flagship online journal Classics@, and of the magisterial Homer Multitext) are ungainly, arbitrary, and almost certainly not stable. Even worse, many individual pages within the site have URLs that contain a session-specific hash, and so cannot be cited at all:

• http://chs.harvard.edu/wa/pageR?tn=ArticleWrapper&bdc=12&mn=1167 is ugly but might be (relatively) stable, at least until the CMS is replaced somewhere down the line…
• http://chs.harvard.edu/wb/88/wo/huSixDjc0n2TsxU53lRd4M/0.0.0.0.19.1.7.15.1.1.0.1.2.0.5.1.3.3.1 however is even uglier, and probably won’t work by the time you come to click on it.

One might argue that these pages should be cited as if they were paper publications, and readers are then left to their own devices to track them down, but surely that isn’t good enough? Are there any solutions to citing electronically, and linking to, a page whose URL is likely to be itinerant? A persistent redirect? A Zotero biblio URL that you can update if you notice it’s broken?