Sharing Ancient WisdomS

Learning from Experience:

The case of SAWS

Exploring the Tradition of Greek and Arabic Wisdom Literatures

Charlotte Roueché – Centre for Hellenic Studies, King’s College London

SAWS project:

Sharing Ancient WisdomsAlexander, asked

whom he loved

more, Philip or

Aristotle, said:

”Both equally, for

one gave me the

gift of life, the other

taught me to live

the virtuous life.

Socrates said: "I have

met with three evils –

grammar, poverty and

a damned woman. I

made my escape from

two of them, but I

could not escape the

damned woman.

Diogenes was asked by someone

why people give to beggars but

not at all to philosophers, and he

said: Because, perhaps, they

expect to become lame or blind

but not to become philosophers.

Aristotle said

that educators

are more to be

honored than

mere begetters,

for the latter

offer life but the

former offer the

good life.

He [Pythagoras] said:

Fathers are the cause

of life, but philosophers

are the cause of the

good life.

Alexander admired Aristotle

at the start and loved him

no less, as he himself said,

than his own father, since

he had life through his

father but the virtuous life

through Aristotle

An ambitious aim: to bring different specialists

together within a single output:

the SAWS Dynamic Library

We may have been naïve when we set this as our

target. We have indeed achieved it: but what did

we learn along the way?

And what would have been useful to know at the

start of the project?

Frontiers to cross:

•National

•Administrative

•Language

•Discipline

•External

•Age

Working across national borders

This was the simplest of our challenges. All of us work in

small specialist subject areas, and were therefore used

to working with colleagues all over the world.

We met most often in London, because it tended to be the

easiest place for everyone to meet. Otherwise we used

Skype a lot, and DropBox for sharing our texts.

You still have to make an effort to ensure that everyone is in

the loop all the time . . . You speak to someone in the

corridor, but forget to record it for the others . . .

Jordanous, Stanley, Tupman -Contemporary Solutions to publish ancient

documents (SAWS/Islandora) DH2013

Administrative

In your group, you need to think hard about who is to be

the PL.

There a lot of chores:

• Some academic - writing the application through to

writing the report

• Many administrative and financial

So the most important question is –

Who has the most robust research administration

backup team?

Language

All the project leaders were entirely comfortable working and

writing in English. This presented slightly more problems for

some of the junior researchers.

Our materials were in several languages - primarily medieval

Greek and Arabic, but also Spanish and Latin: we did not all

know all the languages. It would have been desirable to end

up translating everything into one language, but this would

have been a much heavier task for some than for others.

BUT some of our language difficulties were interdisciplinary and

the simplest words are the most dangerous. Do you all

mean the same thing by ‘library’ or ‘edition’ or

‘concordance’? It might be useful even to build a project

glossary.

Interdisciplinarity

This always tends to be difficult. Perceptions are very

important and Respect Matters.

The textual scholars had great respect for one another,

reflecting the traditions of their training. They had more

difficulty in understanding the role of the digital humanists on

the project, as not just technical supporters, but co-

researchers. I feel sure that similar gaps appear in other

interdisciplinary projects.

I had to spend quite a lot of energy on these relationships.

You can set the stage for this at the beginning: but trust and

respect really develop over time, as you work together. You

need to be alert for gaps opening up, and to explain, again

and again, what value each member is brining to the project.

External relationships

A core element of our project was to link and connect with

other online scholarly resources, and to make ourselves

available to them.

These are far more abundant for classical Greek materials

than for medieval Greek, or for Arabic - so there was an

imbalance.

But there was also, I think, an emotional barrier - the idea of

linking up to other people’s publications is a little unsettling

for some people. It is the PL’s job to build the confidence of

other in the project. But I was too slow to realise that some of

my partners were making much less use of such resources.

SAWS manuscripts contain references to geographical

places that are listed in the Pleiades ancient gazetteer

SAWS texts and their inter-

relationships are modelled

by an ontology that reuses

the FRBRoo and CIDOC

models

Several datasets are linked together in

Pelagios, including…

Pelagios links together

several datasets via

shared geographical

links (using Pleiades

URIs, OAC annotations

and VoID descriptions)

Content links

exist between

SAWS and

Perseus texts

Sharing Ancient WisdomsExploring the tradition of Greek & Arabic wisdom

literatures using Semantic Web Technologies

http://www.ancientwisdoms.ac.uk/

PleiadesAn online gazetteer of ancient geographical

places

http://pleiades.stoa.org/

PerseusA digital library of

transcriptions of ancient texts

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/

PelagiosA ‘networking medium’ for ancient places, using Linked Open Data

principles

http://pelagios-project.blogspot.co.uk/

SPQRSemantic descriptions of data on

Byzantine resources including ancient papyri and inscriptions

http://spqr.cerch.kcl.ac.uk/

NomismaData on ancient

coin hoards

http://nomisma.or

g/

Geographical

references in

SAWS texts

are being

linked to

PelagiosPapyri.info

Papyrological documents

http://papyri.info/

Iaph & IRTInscriptions from

Aphrodisias and from Roman Tripolitania

http://insaph.kcl.ac.uk/

http://irt.kcl.ac.uk/

SPQR semantic data describe

data on inscriptions and papyri

CIDOC-CRMA cultural heritage model

http://www.cidoc-crm.org/

FRBR-ooA model of bibliographic records, harmonised with CIDOC http://www.cidoc-

crm.org/frbr_inro.html

“Linked Ancient Data” – links

outside SAWS texts

Age

This was a frontier which I had not foreseen.

My age means that I can take risks - such as publishing in a

new and unconventional format.

The digital humanists on the team can publish online with no

problems.

For my textual colleagues, this is not a risk that they can

afford to run. They will need to generate printed books to

advance their careers in traditional departments. This may

have meant a slight withholding of commitment by them. If

the online edition was perfect, would a book publisher take

on the production of a printed version?

You need to be aware of these aspects, and where the

project fits into each person’s career.

Benefits

All these matters had to be negotiated.

In the process we all learned new things, and had to think

about our own approaches to our material.

We were developing a form of publication, and were

resolved to share it: it was therefore useful to have to think

about the demands of different projects - although not easy!

We developed an understanding of teamwork which is still

rare in the Humanities. The PL has to set the tone.

Jordanous, Stanley, Tupman -Contemporary Solutions to publish ancient

documents (SAWS/Islandora) DH2013

Knowledge Exchange

Our project was principally useful to others through

its methodology – which is now being taken up.

We spent a lot of time presenting our work and

inviting comments and criticisms: we reported on this

activity regularly, and even provided a map.

Jordanous, Stanley, Tupman -Contemporary Solutions to publish ancient

documents (SAWS/Islandora) DH2013

For an excellent presentation from another

preoject see the AHRC website:

http://www.slideshare.net/AHRC/hera-

creativity-and-craft-production-in-middle-

and-late-bronze-age-europe-cinba

Aristotle

tutoring

Alexander

(13th

century

manuscript)

Sharing Ancient WisdomS

http://www.ancientwisdoms.ac.uk

The exchange of ideas

continues . . .