The Perseus Project is a

digital library A digital library, also called an online library, an internet library, a digital repository, or a digital collection is an online database of digital objects that can include text, still images, audio, video, digital documents, or other digital ...

project of

Tufts University Tufts University is a private research university on the border of Medford and Somerville, Massachusetts. It was founded in 1852 as Tufts College by Christian universalists who sought to provide a nonsectarian institution of higher learning. ...

, which assembles digital collections of

humanities Humanities are academic disciplines that study aspects of human society and culture. In the Renaissance, the term contrasted with divinity and referred to what is now called classics, the main area of secular study in universities at t ...

resources. Version 4.0 is also known as the "Perseus Hopper", and it is hosted by the Department of Classical Studies. The project is mirrored by the Max Planck Society in

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitu ...

, Germany, as well as by the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

History

The project was founded in 1987 to collect and present materials for the study of

ancient Greece Ancient Greece ( el, Ἑλλάς, Hellás) was a northeastern Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity ( AD 600), that comprised a loose collection of cu ...

. It has published two

CD-ROM A CD-ROM (, compact disc read-only memory) is a type of read-only memory consisting of a pre-pressed optical compact disc that contains data. Computers can read—but not write or erase—CD-ROMs. Some CDs, called enhanced CDs, hold both com ...

s and established the Perseus Digital Library on the

World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet. Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web ...

in 1995. The project has expanded its original scope; current collections cover Greco-Roman classics and the English Renaissance. Other materials, such as the papers of

Edwin Bolles The name Edwin means "rich friend". It comes from the Old English elements "ead" (rich, blessed) and "ƿine" (friend). The original Anglo-Saxon form is Eadƿine, which is also found for Anglo-Saxon figures. People * Edwin of Northumbria (died ...

and the history of Tufts University, have been moved into the Tufts Digital Library. The editor-in-chief of the project is Gregory R. Crane, the Tufts Winnick Family Chair in Technology and Entrepreneurship. He has held that position since the founding of the Perseus Project.

Text format

Ancient Greek works in Perseus are stored as beta code, although they may be reformatted for display into a variety of transcription systems. To accommodate the defective Greek orthography for vowels, online dictionary headings use ''α^ ι^ υ^'' for short ''α ι υ'' (typeset in the print ''Liddell & Scott'' as ''ᾰ ῐ ῠ'') and ''α_ ι_ υ_'' for long ''α ι υ'' (typeset in print as ''ᾱ ῑ ῡ'').

Copyright status

The Perseus Project supports open-source content, and it has published code on

SourceForge SourceForge is a web service that offers software consumers a centralized online location to control and manage open-source software projects and research business software. It provides source code repository hosting, bug tracking, mirroring ...

. Perseus is a contributor to the Open Content Alliance. The project also supports the

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...

. All texts and materials believed to be in the public domain are available for free download in

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. T ...

format from Perseus 4.0. For a specific example, see the download and license information fo
Murray's translation of Homer's ''Odyssey''
Some content is restricted by

intellectual property Intellectual property (IP) is a category of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect. There are many types of intellectual property, and some countries recognize more than others. The best-known types are patents, co ...

license A license (or licence) is an official permission or permit to do, use, or own something (as well as the document of that permission or permit). A license is granted by a party (licensor) to another party (licensee) as an element of an agreeme ...

agreements with the holders of the rights to that material.

References

Literature

* Thomas R. Martin (1996). ''Ancient Greece from Prehistoric to Hellenistic Times''.

Yale University Press Yale University Press is the university press of Yale University. It was founded in 1908 by George Parmly Day, and became an official department of Yale University in 1961, but it remains financially and operationally autonomous. , Yale Univers ...

. . A text written by Professor Martin to accompany the Perseus Project online resources.

External links