Early attempts at digitalisation - What was the point?

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Stephen Hughes
Posts: 3323
Joined: February 26th, 2013, 7:12 am

Early attempts at digitalisation - What was the point?

Post by Stephen Hughes »

Not a few early attempts at digitalisation ended up like this one of "Aeschyli Prometheus Vinctus, ed. by H.M. Stephenson".

With a lot of patience, and an actual copy of the Greek text, it is possible to mine the commentary for some value, but it is not easy going. Even the Greek text is rendered into English characters.

It is a beginners' level text, and here is an extract from the text, for example:
HÝ. alat IIpo|XT)0ci)) <r»v {rircpcrrcvca iróVuv.
KP. crv 8' afl KaroKvcís, t»v Aids t' tyQp&v ihrcp

orevcis* friws p--ř| cravrov oIktieís iroré.
H#. ópc£$ (Mapa SvcrOcarov #|&|uuriv.
KP. ópá> Kvpovvra tóvSí twv éiragCcov. 70

áXX' au<|>l irXcvpaís |MurxaXurrf)pas PaXc
H#. Spdv tovt' ávťryKT], \ir\hkv iyK&cv' &yav.
KP. fj aíjv KfXcvVc*, KáirvOíovfo) ^c irpóV

X<&p€l KaTW, (TK^Xl) 8<- KCpKOKTOV f3Ca.

H#. Kal 8f| iréirpaKTai roifpyov ov p.oKp<p iróvcp. 75
And from the glossary, for another example:
u> raný, 358.
<t-||i. prayer, ĚOO.
íůtíflío, ňmpkwM, foliy, 391.
(i|iop<p£ii,/«M»i'aWíiMpíc( 1 603.
tvutaipa, teilfrllow, 914.
ti{v)ipXi|Tot, w, ťa*y to ťn/pr-

í-!-eí, 794.
íiiivu|M>*, or, i^/i, inaiwptcíoK*,

táXi), ««■/, spray [ftu, Soťř],

^|XieuJ«, «ťwpí/y, 1082.
■fúWmfWjí, Mtn-trodtteu
fmvmmt, 810.

iprioí, a, or, soothiny, 490.
The stated aims of the project are:

This is adigital copy of a bix>k lhal was preservcd for generál ions on library slíd ves before il was carcfully scanned by Google as pari of a projed

to makc the workl's books discovcrable onlinc.

Il has survived long enough Tor ihe copyrighl lo expire and the book to enter the public domain. A public domain book is onc lhal was never subjecl

lo copyright or whosc legal copyright term has expired. Whcthcr a book is in the public domain may vary country locountry. Public domain books

are our gateways to the pásl. represenling a wealth of hislory. culture and knowledge lhaťs oflen dillicult lo discover.

Marks. noialions and other marginalia present in the originál volume will appear in this lile - a reminder of this book's long journey from the

publisher lo a library and linally lo you.
Those sound very good, but looking at it, I wonder what the rationale behind e-publishing a work of that quality was?
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
Ken M. Penner
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Joined: May 12th, 2011, 7:50 am
Location: Antigonish, NS, Canada
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Re: Early attempts at digitalisation - What was the point?

Post by Ken M. Penner »

The Optical Character Recognition was not the main point of digitizing the book.
Google was trying to preserve the image scans of the book, as seen at https://archive.org/details/aeschyliprometh00aescgoog
The OCR was an automatically-generated bonus, a bonus of dubious value in this case because of the poor quality of the images.
Ken M. Penner
Professor and Chair of Religious Studies, St. Francis Xavier University
Co-Editor, Digital Biblical Studies
General Editor, Lexham English Septuagint
Co-Editor, Online Critical Pseudepigrapha pseudepigrapha.org
Stephen Hughes
Posts: 3323
Joined: February 26th, 2013, 7:12 am

Re: Early attempts at digitalisation - What was the point?

Post by Stephen Hughes »

Ken M. Penner wrote:The Optical Character Recognition was not the main point of digitizing the book.
Google was trying to preserve the image scans of the book, as seen at https://archive.org/details/aeschyliprometh00aescgoog
The OCR was an automatically-generated bonus, a bonus of dubious value in this case because of the poor quality of the images.
I see.

The scanning doesn't seem to have noticed that there are two languages running through the work. I'm glad that the project has preserved the aids to reading not only the text, for our use.

From the stamp on the page facing the preface, the "original" scanned was from the Bodleian Library at Oxford.

Another two repositories for this text are from freebookfiles.elonex.com, or from https://archive.org/details/aeschyliprometh00aescgoog. For G.Play, the address is here.
___________________

FWIW, the parts that I randomly chose were:
  • The scan of the text came from page 3 of the text (page 22 of the .pdf), from
    ΗΦ. αἰαῖ, Προμηθεῦ, σῶν ὑπερστένω πόνων.
    down to
    ΗΦ. καὶ δὴ πέπρακται τοὔργον οὐ μακρῷ πόνῳ. 75
  • The scan of the glossary came from page 65 of the text (page 84 of the .pdf), reading from:
    εὐάγκαλος, ον, easy for the arms to carry, 358.
    down to
    ἠπίος, α, ον, soothing, 490.
    at the bottom of the page.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
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