Submitted by:
Robert Hollander
Professor in European Literature Director, DDP Department: Comparative Literature
Princeton University
326 East Pyne
Princeton, NJ 08544 USA
v: (609) 258-4027
f: (609) 258-1873
e: bobh@phoenix.princeton.edu
Categories:
Research, academic
Keywords:
Innovative or improved ways of doing things; More equitable access to technology or electronic information; Creation of new ideas, products, or services; Technology transfer; Local commitment to network-based activities; Leverage of public funding; Volunteer contributions of time and energy; Partnerships between public and private sector
Supporting Documentation (contact author for more information):
Documentation [hardcopy and demo disk available]
Story Site (if other than location listed above):
Hanover. New Hampshire 03755
The Story:
The Dartmouth Dante Project, founded in 1982, will eventually make available on line some 60 line-by-line commentaries to Dante’s DIVINA COMMEDIA composed in the last 670 years. The principal site of the project is Dartmouth College, which has had the collaboration, both financial and collegial, of Princeton University. In February of 1993 the federal government (by agency of NEH, the National Endowment for the Humanities) has furnished ca. $500,000 to the project, while other sources (Dartmouth College, Princeton University, The Dante Society of America, The Mellon Foundation, Digital Equipment, Apple Computer, the AT&T Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation) have granted ca. $500,000 in additional funds or gifts in kind. Recently an Italian “team,” directed by Professor Francesco Mazzoni, President of the Societa` Dantesca Italiana, has begun editing some of the commentaries for inclusion in the database with computers donated by IBM Italia. All sixty commentaries are currently “machine-readable,” the equivalent of between 100,000 and 200,000 pages of printed text. In October of 1988, when the database was opened to public consultation, eighteen commentaries were available. Currently there are 46 on line. By the spring of 1993 that number will reach 55 or so. Anyone may subscribe to the project for what is currently a life-time membership fee of $25. Users may also consult the database without charge merely by logging on to the Dartmouth Library computer (baker.dartmouth.edu) and typing “connect dante” at the prompt. In the last three months some 600 sessions have been logged each month. The methods of gaining access to the texts of the commentaries (and the text of the poem in the edition of Giorgio Petrocchi) include all of the usual options the electronic user might want to expect: whether by reference to particular texts in the poem or by “key words,” in various combinations. For now, access is limited to computer/telephone communication to Dartmouth over the Internet. It is possible that the project may one day issue a CD-ROM version. This is, however, far from certain; in any case, our firm intention is to maintain the Internet interface no matter whatever other forms of consultation are eventually developed.
The DDP’s ability to make use of the Internet has been essential to its world-wide dissemination. It is in the process of becoming an international resource, not only to students of Dante, but to others, such as classicists, historians, and linguists, who find it an invaluable collection of data, whether one wants to trace the history of an idea or simply see what the changing reception of a particular verse in Dante has been over a 700-year timespan. For Dantists, the DDP has two enormous advantages; for those few who do have access to all the commentaries, its ways of searching are infinitely more reliable and intriguing; for those who do not, it has helped “democratize” the base of knowledge that these commentaries represent, putting them on an equal footing with the happy few who have access to great research libraries. Locally, the DDP has helped Dartmouth extend the use of its library system, with its excellent hardware and software configuration, to include a major database that is consultable internationally. The project has also served as a model for other attempts to leverage public expenditure with matching private donations, and vice versa. It has also been able to count on large donations of time by individual Dante scholars who have agreed to copyedit machine-readable texts before they are entered into the database. And, hardly least, it is beginning to be employed as a teaching tool in graduate and undergraduate courses devoted to Dante.
For additional information contact:
Steve Campbell
Database manager, DDP
Kiewit Computing Center
Dartmouth College
Hanover, NH 03755
v: (603) 646-3231
e: steve@baker.dartmouth.edu