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 learnin ...

, 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 th ...

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 The Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science (german: Max-Planck-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften e. V.; abbreviated MPG) is a formally independent non-governmental and non-profit association of German research institutes. ...

Berlin Berlin is Capital of Germany, the capital and largest city of Germany, both by area and List of cities in Germany by population, by population. Its more than 3.85 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European U ...

, Germany, as well as by the

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

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 cult ...

. It has published two CD-ROMs 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 se ...

in 1995. The project has expanded its original scope; current collections cover Greco-Roman classics and the

English Renaissance The English Renaissance was a cultural and artistic movement in England from the early 16th century to the early 17th century. It is associated with the pan-European Renaissance that is usually regarded as beginning in Italy in the late 14th cen ...

. Other materials, such as the papers of Edwin Bolles and the history of Tufts University, have been moved into the

Tufts Digital Library 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. ...

. The editor-in-chief of the project is

Gregory R. Crane Gregory may refer to: People and fictional characters * Gregory (given name), including a list of people and fictional characters with the given name * Gregory (surname), a surname Places Australia *Gregory, Queensland, a town in the Shire of ...

, 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, mirrori ...

. 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. ...

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, cop ...

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 Univer ...

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

External links