Very interesting question! Which, in my opinion, becomes even more interesting when the tool has a deep impact on our research procedures. For example, the TLG changes the way we study intertextuality. The occurrence of a phrase in similar passages is today no discovery of the philologist's "Ohrenphilologie" (philology "by ear": learned reader's memory), but given data, since one can perform a search through digital textual corpora like the TLG automatically. Most philologists today do so. Yet, hardly anyone writes a footnote saying "From a TLG search it results that...".
I find that this issue is even more serious if we think of the limits that these tools (like every tool) have. When I search the PHI5.2 Latin corpus with the Diogenes application for the co-occurrence of "hodie" and "cras" and I find 40 matches, this doesn't mean that, as we often write in our papers, "there are 40 instances of this direct opposition in the Latin literature". There are certainly a number of instances that are not included in the PHI5.2 corpus (Late Antiquity, textual variants etc.).
This does not mean that my results are "wrong" or useless. I should just specify the procedure I used, while sharing my data with the reader, for him to interpret them (this are the basics of methodology in positive sciences).
I am under the impression that:
a) we classicists are often somewhat ashamed of using these tools, and indulge in leaving the doubt in the reader whether our "parallel texts hunt" is the result of our noble "Ohrenphilologie" or of "trivial" computing;
b) we also often forget the relevance that the limits of our tools have on the interpretation of the results (this may also happen, I think, with tools like the traditional print Thesaurus Linguae Graecae).
All best,
Paolo
-------- Original-Nachricht --------
> Datum: Sun, 31 Jan 2010 00:29:39 +0200
> Von: Robert Barron <[log in to unmask]>
> An: [log in to unmask]
> Betreff: [DIGITALCLASSICIST] Use of digital projects by others
> Hello,
>
> There are dozens of projects in the digital classics;
> http://www.arts-humanities.net/disciplines/classics_ancient_history
> http://wiki.digitalclassicist.org/Category:Projects
>
> Is there any measurement of how much these projects are used, and cited,
> by
> researchers outside of the origional groups?
>
> If someone uses the Lexicon of Greek Personal Names, Volterra or The
> History
> of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama (to name just three random ones I
> picked), would you expect them to be cited?
> Or would it be "transparent", like not citing Lewis & Short or Perseus
> when
> all you did was look up a word?
>
> Robert Barron
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