08-17-2007, 10:47 AM
Quote:With several universities embarking on digitisation projects, I just wondered if one of them had bagged Ritterling.I have no very high opinion of projects when universities are involved. Of course, there are several good projects, but usually, they start something pretending to be hip, and once they've received an indecent amount of subsidy, the project miraculously comes to an end, and the money is transferred to another project - usually advertisements or new furniture. Or they refuse to answer e-mail from the interested reader (as a consequence of which I now receive about 100 messages/week). Or they do not really proofread (Perseus!). Not putting online the entire Realenzyclopädie (or just Ritterling; or the Neue Pauly) just fits this pattern.
In general -and not wanting to criticize the few good projects that do exist- the problem is deeper. To impress the government and to receive money, a university needs to be hip, modern, and new. The trouble is that the study of the past leans heavily on a great tradition. Books like the Realenzyclopädie or the CIL, series like Teubner and Oxford, or Budé, Tusculum, Loeb. Investing in IT and taking away money from plain, good old libraries is right now just killing a field of research AND THE SCHOLARS DO NOTHING.
I have been there when a library department was converted into a computer room, and we were supposed to be happy with it; the books that used to be there (the full Migne series of patristic writings) are now no longer directly accessible. At the same time, I see lots of books written for the general audience that just copy information from the Wikipedia (e.g., Tom Holland, Persian Fire, contains an error only found in the Wiki article on Cyrus the Great). I sometimes work for a publishing house, and I do not want to remember how often I have heard people say "but it is in the Wiki" when I pointed out a factual error.
I am sorry for this philippic, but I am left with a feeling that we have been betrayed by the universities. They have accepted modern-style managers to give directions; but scholars ought to have spit in their hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats (to quote a line I just picked up from our Memmia).
Again, I don't want to blame the good scholars that are still there. I'm serious about that. But the majority appears to be more interested in their mortgages and keep a low profile, instead of fighting for the survival of an important branch of scholarship. There is more love for the truth about the past among reenactors than among the majority of ancient historians.
