Tools for the creation of a digital library of the Appendix Vergiliana

When it comes to assessing the authorship of a literary work, scholars need to have at their disposal all the best tools. Notably, a reasoned bibliography allows researchers to have an immediate reference to all the works related to a specific composition. In this way, investigators have the chance to read about methodologies and criteria that have already been applied, note critical points, and deepen, if need be, possible improvements. It is surely a time-consuming process, but it can guide an investigation towards a more scientific and objective analysis of the literary work. Other helpful resources could include the stemma codicum, graphs ¹, and the possibility to download a series of different files ².

All these elements could be gathered in what is commonly called a digital library. In particular, we are referring to the idea presented by Lana (2012a: 7) for the creation of the Digital library of late-antique Latin texts: “una biblioteca che nasce per raccogliere, catalogare, dare accesso a materiali testuali che rispondono ad una specifica necessità di studio e di conoscenza”.

What it shares with a traditional library is the tripartition in: gathering, managing and conservation of data, and services for the users (cf. Lana 2012a: 16). Therefore, it is a library that contains not only the texts of the poems, but also resources for scholars. In this case, there is an obvious advantage — accessibility, i.e., the possibility for the user to easily access many useful tools for the investigation of one or more literary works.

The Appendix Vergiliana was chosen due to the remarkable interest raised in terms of authorship attribution. There are more than 700 publications, thereby emphasising the outstanding importance that surrounds this group of Latin poems.

For the creation of the digital library (www.appendixvergiliana.org), the following tools were involved:

• JabRef ³ for the BibTeX catalogue and the table of abbreviations;
• The forest package (Živanović 2017) available at the Comprehensive TeX Archive Network (CTAN) for the creation of the stemmata codicum;
• Google Charts for the realisation of the graphs.

The catalogue containing all the publications features an interface that allows to search ⁴ and extract bibliographical references easily and quickly. For the articles, the abbreviations of the Année Philologique (Cufalo 2017) were adopted, and a table to interpret the acronyms was created. The catalogue serves to deepen the information listed in the reasoned bibliography of each poem, where the author and year are always indicated. Occasionally, it is possible to find the number of page(s) if the publication is about two or more compositions. Equally, sometimes the number of verses is specified when the publication regards a specific verse or stanza.

In my proposed presentation, I would like to discuss the challenges of creating and maintaining the digital library, the possibilities offered by the available tools and future developments.