An article by Syriaca.org editors Nathan P. Gibson, David A. Michelson, and Daniel L. Schwartz titled “From Manuscript Catalogues to a Handbook of Syriac Literature: Modeling an Infrastructure for Syriaca.org” has been published in the peer-reviewed, open-access Journal of Data Mining and Digital Humanities (ISSN 2416-5999). The article explores the goals and standards of The New Handbook of Syriac Literature. It is part of the Special Issue on Computer-Aided Processing of Intertextuality in Ancient Languages, and is free to read, reuse, and redistribute with attribution under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 International License.
View article web page: http://jdmdh.episciences.org/1395
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Abstract
Despite increasing interest in Syriac studies and growing digital availability of Syriac texts, there is currently no up-to-date infrastructure for discovering, identifying, classifying, and referencing works of Syriac literature. The standard reference work (Baumstark’s Geschichte) is over ninety years old, and the perhaps 20,000 Syriac manuscripts extant worldwide can be accessed only through disparate catalogues and databases. The present article proposes a tentative data model for Syriaca.org’s New Handbook of Syriac Literature, an open-access digital publication that will serve as both an authority file for Syriac works and a guide to accessing their manuscript representations, editions, and translations. The authors hope that by publishing a draft data model they can receive feedback and incorporate suggestions into the next stage of the project.