Announcements

• February 7, 2008:
  • Building a "FRBR-Inspired" Catalog: The Perseus Digital Library has been exploring the creation of a FRBR-Inspired catalog for classics, and with funding from the Mellon Foundation, has taken some preliminary steps beyond our initial work first reported in October 2005. If you are interested in reading more, please check out our new report.
• November 9, 2007:
  • Install Perseus 4.0 on your computer: All of the source code for the Perseus Java Hopper and much of the content in Perseus is now available under an open source license. You can download the code, compile it, and run it on your own system. This requires more labor and a certain level of expertise for which we can only provide minimal support. However, since it will be running on your own machine, it can be much faster than our website, especially during peak usage times. You also have the option to install only certain collections or texts on your version, making it as specialized as you wish. Also, if you want to use a different system to make the content available, you can do so within the terms of the Creative Commons license. This is the first step in open sourcing the code as you can modify the code as much as you want, but at this time, we cannot integrate your changes back into our system. That is our ultimate goal, so keep a look out for that!
  • Download source code here
  • Download text data here
• November 15, 2006:
  • Classics in a Digital World: Curious about where classics might go in a digital world? See the preprint of a new article about ePhilology that will appear in The Blackwell Companion to Digital Literary Studies.
• October 12, 2006:
  • Issues resolved: Morphological analyses should now be up and running again; many texts that were throwing errors are now working properly. Our sincere apologies for the issues. Please keep reporting any errors--we're not any more pleased about them than you are!
• October 10, 2006:
  • More site issues: the maintenance seems to have resulted in some problems. One of them, a display bug in Internet Explorer, was fixed this morning; others (including "null" showing up in place of some texts and lexicon entries not appearing on morphological analyses) we're hoping to fix today or tommorrow. We're very sorry for the trouble!
• August 16, 2006:
  • Hardware problems!: A key server in the Perseus site has experience intermittent hardware problems. We are in the process of upgrading this hardware and creating a more stable hardware environment. We apologize for the delays and hope to have the problem resolved in a few days.
  • Vocabulary Tool: A first release at a new Vocabulary Tool widget is now available on the text page.

• June 21, 2006: Art and Archaeology Browser Updated

• March 15, 2006: Improvements to the Perseus Digital Library

  • Migration of core data to the Tufts University Repository: We are beginning to shift core Perseus data to the Tufts Institutional Repository, where it will become a part of the university's permanent collection. There are several implications:
  • Preservation: This step addresses the long term needs of preservation and access: while Perseus has been in operation for almost two decades, libraries are better suited to maintain collections over time than particular projects.
  • Separation of production from research: The on-line version of the Perseus Digital Library, now more than ten years old, has combined services with research and development activities. As time progresses, established services will shift to the institutional repository, with the Perseus Digital Library focusing progressively more on research and development. As research services become established and prove useful, they will subsequently migrate to the production server.
  • Named entity browsing and searching: Perseus has extracted placenames and dates from full text for more than five years. This version of the Perseus Digital Library adds additional functionality:
    • You can now search for and browse placenames and dates in Perseus documents.
    • We are adding personal names and will soon add other categories (e.g., organizations). Personal names are in the new Perseus American collection and will be added to classical texts. Classical texts have placenames and dates marked in their public XML source.
  • Downloadable XML source texts: Public domain primary materials are now available under a Creative Commons license for download in their native XML format.
  • Bug fixes and incremental modifications: many general optimizations have been implemented, and various display issues have been fixed, based on user reports.
  • Improved hardware: we are adding new servers that are not only faster but easier to manage. This should improve not only speed but reliability.

• May 27, 2005: Perseus 4.0 released -- a new implementation of the Perseus Digital Library.

  Perseus 4.0, a new Java-based version of the Perseus Digital Library, is available for testing. It contains a faster, more manageable back-end and a more modern look and feel. Many features of Perseus are now available as XML services -- for example, developers can extract well-formed XML fragments of primary sources with full TEI-conformant markup in order to create their own front ends. Read more...

About Perseus

Since planning began in 1985, the Perseus Digital Library Project has explored what happens when libraries move online. Two decades later, as new forms of publication emerge and millions of books become digital, this question is more pressing than ever. Perseus is a practical experiment in which we explore possibilities and challenges of digital collections in a networked world.

Our flagship collection, under development since 1987, covers the history, literature and culture of the Greco-Roman world. We are applying what we have learned from Classics to other subjects within the humanities and beyond. We have studied many problems over the past two decades, but our current research centers on personalization: organizing what you see to meet your needs. Read more...

Perseus contact and support information.

Perseus is a non-profit enterprise, located in the Department of the Classics, Tufts University.

The Perseus Project is funded by the Digital Libraries Initiative Phase 2, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Science Foundation, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, private donations, and Tufts University.

Support for the project has been provided by the Annenberg/CPB Project, Apple Computer, the Berger Family Technology Transfer Endowment, the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education part of the U.S. Department of Education, the Getty Grant program, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Modern Language Association, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Packard Humanities Institute, Xerox Corporation, Boston University, and Harvard University.