‘Pulling down’ Books vs. ‘Pulling Up’ Files: Textual Databanks and the Changing Culture of Classical Scholarship

Abstract

The culture of classical scholarship is changing as traditional paper-based materials are being repackaged in electronic form. This paper investigates the changes effected by a Greek textual databank, the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae (TLG). The TLG changes the textual landscape, making available to scholars texts previously accessible with difficulty—or not at all. At the same time, it changes the traditional relationship between scholar and text. ‘Knowing’ a text is replaced by knowing how to construct search algorithms. Critical notes, repositories of centuries of expertise, are decoupled from the source materials. And new forms of technical expertise are becoming necessary in order to exploit domain expertise. The questions raised by classicists' use of textual databanks concern all communities which move from ‘pulling down’ books to ‘pulling up’ files. A technology gives threefold shape to work; it gives form to the everyday experience of work; it defines the concepts with which we think about experience; and it imposes control upon the social relations of work. (Lyman, 1984).