“From Dictionary to
Superdocument: XML, the Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary, and the Universe”
Steve Tinney, Babylonian Section, University of Pennsylvania Museum
(stinney@sas.upenn.edu) The ever-increasing importance of computers in
gathering, storing, and presenting knowledge brings with it the need to respond
to the challenge of exploiting the potential of electronic information
management to the maximum. But while it is natural to view knowledge management
from the viewpoint of eventual delivery or publication, whatever form it may
take, the issue of information reusability is at least as important, and
arguably more so. Reusability requires well-structured information as well as
permission to reuse it and the means to access it. One of the promises of XML
and its increasing circle of friends and relatives is the provision of a
well-defined means of defining information structure and accessibility, not
only as it relates to publication, but also as it relates to the storage and
relational organization of interconnected datasets. Several aspects and
implications of the above will be discussed in the present paper, particularly
as they relate to the ongoing development of an electronic version of the
Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary (ePSD). A brief orientation to relevant
components of the XML world will be followed by a discussion of some key
elements of the ePSD implementation. Some general considerations concerning the
relationship between data, knowledge, dissemination and extant structures of
publication and academia will also be offered. “The Ancient Egyptian Dictionary
Project: Data Exchange and Publication on the Internet” Stephan Seidlmayer, Berlin-Brandenburg
Academy of Sciences and Humanities (seidlmayer@bbaw.de) Since 1993 the Ancient
Egyptian Dictionary project has been housed at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy
of Sciences and Humanities in Berlin. It aims to provide up-to-date lexical
information on the Egyptian language, supplementing and replacing the great
Wörterbuch der ägyptischen Sprache by Adolf Erman and Hermann Grapow, which
appeared in twelve volumes between 1926 and 1963, and which is outdated in
important respects. As in the Wörterbuch der ägyptischen Sprache, work at the
Ancient Egyptian Dictionary project is centered on compiling a comprehensive
corpus of Egyptian texts, which in turn provides the basis of the dictionary.
Both the corpus of texts and the dictionary are produced as a database and will
be published in due course on the Internet. In this context, encoding Egyptian
texts in XML will play an important part, because this standard supports
long-term system-independent storage of the data, because it offers a common
platform for the exchange of encoded texts and thus for international
cooperation in the Ancient Egyptian Dictionary project, and because it opens up
new perspectives for the publication of the material on the Internet. Open
discussion: “The Current State of Electronic Publication: Problems and
Possibilities” Moderated by Charles Jones, Research Archivist and
Bibliographer, Oriental Institute (ce-jones@uchicago.edu) and John Sanders,
Head, Oriental Institute Computer Laboratory (jc-sanders@uchicago.edu), University
of Chicago Topics to consider include: (1) advantages and disadvantages(!?) of
electronic publication as compared to traditional print publication; (2) good
and bad examples of electronic publications that are available today; (3) the
importance of cross-platform access based on non-proprietary open standards;
(4) the limitations of HTML and the impact of XML/SGML; (5) the availability
and effectiveness of software tools for producing XMLbased electronic
publications; (6) the distinction between markup of content or logical
structure and markup of style or presentation characteristics; (7) the merits
of facsimile reproduction versus transliteration of texts. “Creating,
Integrating, and Expanding Electronic Texts in the Perseus Digital Library”
Jeffrey Rydberg-Cox, Assistant Editor for Greek Language and Lexicography, The
Perseus Project (jrydberg@perseus.tufts.edu) The Perseus Project
(http://www.perseus.tufts.edu) is an evolving digital library of resources for
the study of the ancient world and beyond. Collaborators initially formed the
project to construct a large, heterogeneous collection of materials, textual
and visual, on the Archaic and Classical Greek world. Recent expansion into
Latin texts and tools and Renaissance materials has served to add more coverage
within Perseus and has prompted the project to explore new ways of presenting
complex resources for electronic publication. In this paper the data entry
methods, archival formats, and initial tagging process used by the Perseus
Project will be presented, followed by a description of how tagged information
is used to create “interoperable” primary and secondary sources. These
secondary sources include research tools such as lexica, commentaries, and
morphological analyses, and plans are now being developed for the integration
of geographical data and architectural reconstructions as well. Mention will
also be made of the use by the Perseus Project of techniques from the fields of
information retrieval and corpus linguistics in combination with structured
data to add value to electronic works. “XML and Digital Imaging Considerations
for an Interactive Cuneiform Sign Database” Sandra Woolley
(s.i.woolley@bham.ac.uk) and Theodoros Arvanitis (t.n.arvanitis@bham.ac.uk),
Educational Technology Research Group, School of Electronic and Electrical
Engineering, Tom Davis (t.r.davis@bham.ac.uk), Department of English, and
Alasdair Livingstone (a.livingstone@bham.ac.uk), Department of Ancient History
and Archaeology, University of Birmingham This presentation will summarize the
work of a centrally-funded interdisciplinary team project at the University of
Birmingham, working toward an interactive database of cuneiform signs. The
project team comprises cuneiform specialists from the Department of Ancient
History and Archaeology, digital imaging researchers from the School of
Electronic and Electrical Engineering, and a forensic scientist from the
Department of English Literature. The presentation will describe the objectives
of the project, the findings of the first 12-month study, work in progress, and
plans for future work. There will be a brief description of the basic
principles of forensic handwriting identification, with examples. A proposed
database format, issues relating to XML coding of the data, and plans to
improve digital image representations of cuneiform signs will be presented.
From the website of the University of Birmingham Cuneiform Database Project ):
The usual method of recording and publishing cuneiform material is through the
time-consuming process of copying by hand, and this method is also used in the
standard reference lists of cuneiform signs. Inevitably, the hand of the modern
copyist comes between the hand of the ancient scribe and the eye of the modern
scholar who uses the copy. The University of Birmingham Cuneiform Database
Project seeks to apply the most recent research on digital representation and
compression to the particular challenges posed by cuneiform texts. Relevant
techniques include those developed for industrial inspection and medical
imaging. One of the principal challenges involves three-dimensional
visualization and computation, because a drawback of the traditional
handcopying method is the fact that a three-dimensional script is represented
in two dimensions on paper. A further interdisciplinary aspect of the Cuneiform
Database Project involves the adaptation of existing techniques of handwriting
analysis to the cuneiform writing system, providing a scientific system of
description that will enable an objective categorization of scripts and script
types. Open discussion: “Editing, Disseminating, and Preserving Electronic
Publications” Moderated by Charles Jones and John Sanders, Oriental Institute,
University of Chicago With panelists Patrick Durusau, Interim Manager, Information
Technology Services, Scholars Press (pdurusau@emory.edu), James Eisenbraun,
Publisher, Eisenbrauns Inc. (jeisenbraun@eisenbrauns.com), and Thomas Urban,
Senior Editor, Oriental Institute Publications Office, University of Chicago
(t-urban@uchicago.edu) Topics to consider include: (1) the ease of
“self-publication” on the Web and the role of peer review and editorial
oversight; (2) maintenance and upgrading of delivery media, whether optical
disks or Internet servers; (3) citation of electronic publications and the
problem of permanence; (4) the economics of electronic publication and the fate
of traditional publishers; (5) institutional responsibilities for the
establishment of digital monograph series and journals. “The Achaemenid Royal
Inscriptions Project” Gene Gragg (g-gragg@uchicago.edu) and Matthew Stolper
(m-stolper@uchicago.edu), Oriental Institute, University of Chicago The aim of
the Achaemenid Royal Inscriptions project ) is to create an electronic study
edition of the inscriptions of the Achaemenid Persian kings in all of their
versions: Old Persian, Elamite, Akkadian, and, where appropriate, Aramaic and
Egyptian. The edition is to be accompanied by translations, glossaries,
grammatical indexes, basic bibliographic apparatus, basic text critical
apparatus, and some graphic apparatus (e.g., plans indicating provenience of
the inscriptions, images of exemplars); the texts will be available for
downloading and printing. The first stage of the project presents the
inscriptions from Persepolis and nearby Naqsh-i Rustam, where the Oriental
Institute of the University of Chicago carried out excavations between 1931 and
1939. Close study and accurate use of these texts calls for synoptic
presentation of the versions.