The Digital Classicist is an international community of scholars interested in the application of innovative digital methods and technologies to research on the heritage of the ancient and historical worlds. The community was created in 2005 and the main website is hosted by the King’s College London.
Among the tools offered by the Digital Classicist Community are seminars about digital tools and projects dealing with the study of the ancient world, organised since 2006 and hosted by several institutions (Institute for Classical Studies at the University of London, various institutions in Berlin, the University of Leipzig and the Tufts University in Boston). The results of these seminars have often found publication in peer-reviewed volumes and articles, many of them in open access. Another tool offered by the community is the Discussion list (hosted by JISCmail), in which members can discuss different aspects of Digital Humanities applied to the study of the ancient world and cultural heritage and share news about events, publications and job announcements. The Digital Classicist Community has also a blog, the Stoa Review, which publishes after a process of peer-review news, reviews, opinions and discussions of classical and digital matters.
The most important tool is the Digital Classicist Wiki, a catalogue of digital tools, projects and other resources for the study of the ancient world. An important section of the wiki is the FAQ section for technical questions of interest to classicists and archaeologists. The Wiki is collaboratively edited by the community, which has a small board of administrators and several editors listed in a specific section: more and more users collaborate in implementing this instrument also thanks to the training events regularly organised on how to edit wiki pages.
The Digital Classicist Wiki has several pages but three different kinds can be recognized: pages about projects, research centres and digital tools. Each page is structured as follows: at the beginning of the page there is the link to the external resource, then a prose description (sometimes a quote from the project’s main website) depending on the type of resource described (a project, a research centre or a tool), thereafter information about the principal investigators and project’s collaborators (if applicable). At the end of the page are categories, which are content labels applied by editors to each page to make it more easily searchable. Pages are listed in alphabetical order and can be searched: on the left of the page there is a textual search mask or a menu Navigation: clicking on Categories, there is the possibility to search for categories and to have displayed all the pages labelled with the same category. The Digital Classicist Wiki is not only useful to keep the community up-to-date on recent projects and digital resources but also to keep track of projects which are expired and which can be found under the category ‘Legacy’ (this allows the user also to reflect on the issues of sustainability of digital resources).
Static web pages do not take into account the large number of people active in the community and at the same time the speed with which digital resources change and update. The format of the wiki, open access and easily modifiable by a large number of users allows the Digital Classicist Community to quickly interact and implement this resource, guaranteeing at the same time the openness of the resource, the speed of the updating and the possibility of keeping track of these constant changes. In fact, everyone can ask the administrators for an account and edit the wiki. The quality of the content is monitored by the board and changes to the pages are visible to all by clicking on the ‘View History’ link at the right top of each page.
Resources
The Digital Classicist website: https://www.digitalclassicist.org/
The Digital Classicist Seminars: https://www.digitalclassicist.org/wip/index.html
The Digital Classicist Discussion List: https://wiki.digitalclassicist.org/Digital_Classicist_Discussion_List
The Stoa: A Review for Digital Classics: https://blog.stoa.org/
The Digital Classicist Wiki: https://wiki.digitalclassicist.org/Main_Page
Videos
SunoikisisDC Digital Classics, Autumn 2022. Session 3: Using and Editing the Digital Classicist Wiki (Gabriel Bodard, Rosa Lorito, Paolo Monella): https://youtu.be/BIe1DUburi8
Bibliography
Mahony, Simon. “Research Communities and Open Collaboration: The Example of the Digital Classicist Wiki”. Digital Medievalist 6 (2011). Available at: http://doi.org/10.16995/dm.26
Terras, Melissa. “The Digital Classicist: Disciplinary Focus and Interdisciplinary Vision”. In Digital Research in the Study of Classical Antiquity, edited by S. Mahony, G. Bodard, 171-189. London: Routledge, 2010.