Date: Tuesday April 21, 2026 - 16:30–18:00 BST = 17:30–19:00 CEST

Convenors: Franz Fischer (Ca' Foscari University of Venice)

Youtube link: https://www.youtube.com/live/n33G1mJWqXg?si=V_v3C0AiCCFrdwHM

Slides: Slides Session 1 (PDF)

This seminar will introduce participants to the principles, practices and future prospects of digital scholarly editing. Theoretical reflections on digital textual scholarship will be illustrated by existing editions and current editorial projects. Participants will get familiar with digital standards and methodologies applied to a wide range of literary texts and historical documents. The achievements of digital philology as well as new trends and technologies including the potential use of generative AI applications will be discussed and critically assessed.

• Patrick Sahle, “What Is a Scholarly Digital Edition (SDE)?”. In: Digital Scholarly Editing: Theory, Practice and Future Perspectives, ed. by Matthew Driscoll and Elena Pierazzo (Cambridge, UK: OBP, 2016), 19–39. Online: http://www.openbookpublishers.com//download/book/527, doi:10.11647/OBP.0095.

• Apollon, Daniel, Claire Bélisle, and Philippe Régnier, eds. 2014. Digital Critical Editions. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
• Berti, Monica, ed. 2019. Digital Classical Philology: Ancient Greek and Latin in the Digital Revolution. Berlin: De Gruyter Saur. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110599572.
• Boot, Peter et al. 2017. Advances in Digital Scholarly Editing. Papers presented at the DiXiT conferences in The Hague, Cologne, and Antwerp: Sidestone Press. https://www.sidestone.com/books/advances-in-digital-scholarly-editing.
• O’Sullivan, James, et al., eds. 2025. Digital Editing and Publishing in the Twenty-First Century. Edinburgh: Scottish Universities Press. https://doi.org/10.62637/sup.GHST9020.
• Pierazzo, Elena. 2015. Digital Scholarly Editing: Theories, Models and Method. Farnham, UK: Routledge. Preprint online version: http://hal.univ-grenoble-alpes.fr/hal-01182162/document.
• Pollin, Christopher et al. 2025. When it was 2024 – Generative AI in the Field of Digital Scholarly Editions. In: Zeitschrift für digitale Geisteswissenschaften 10. https://doi.org/10.17175/2025_008.

• A Catalogue of Digital Editions, Greta Franzini et al., 2012ff: https://dig-ed-cat.acdh.oeaw.ac.at/
• A Catalog of Digital Scholarly Editions, Patrick Sahle et al., version 4.045, 2020ff: http://www.digitale-edition.de/.
• Criteria for Reviewing Scholarly Digital Editions, Patrick Sahle et al., version 1.1, 2014: https://www.i-d-e.de/publikationen/weitereschriften/criteria-version-1-1/.
• EpiDoc: Epigraphic Documents in TEI XML, Tom Elliott, Gabriel Bodard, Hugh Cayless et al., 2006-2026: https://epidoc.stoa.org/.
• Manifest für digitale Editionen, https://dhd-blog.org/?p=17563 (de), https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.2532-8816/14814 (it), https://www.i-d-e.de/publikationen/weitereschriften/ (more)
• RIDE, A Review Journal for Scholarly Digital Editions and Resources: https://ride.i-d-e.de/
• TEI Consortium. TEI P5: Guidelines for Electronic Text Encoding and Interchange, version 4.11.0, 2026: https://tei-c.org/release/doc/tei-p5-doc/en/html/.
• The ATLAS Guidelines, Chiara Martignano et al., version 1.0, 2025: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17167253. (web version; pdf version)

• Magica Levantina, https://papyri.uni-koeln.de/magica-levantina/
• Archimedes Palimpsest, http://www.archimedespalimpsest.net/
• Codex Sinaiticus, https://codexsinaiticus.org/
• Guillelmus Autissiodorensis, Summa de officiis ecclesiasticis, https://guillelmus.uni-koeln.de/
• Saint Patrick’s Confessio, https://confessio.ie/
• Saint Patrick’s Epistles, https://gams.uni-graz.at/context:epistles
• Peter of Poitiers' Compendium historiae, https://gams.uni-graz.at/context:chigc
• Transcribe Bentham, https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/transcribe-bentham/
• From the Page, https://fromthepage.com/
• ALDiNa - Archivi Letterari Digitali Nativi, https://aiucd.github.io/aldina/
• Scribes of the Cairo Geniza, https://www.scribesofthecairogeniza.org/
• Vesuvius Challenge, https://scrollprize.org/
• A Social Edition of the Devonshire MS (BL Add. MS 17492), https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/The_Devonshire_Manuscript

1. Choose a digital scholarly editions from the catalogue by Patrick Sahle (http://digitale-edition.de/) or Greta Franzini (https://dig-ed-cat.acdh.oeaw.ac.at/).
2. Briefly describe the work (author, genre, date etc.) and material (inscriptions, manuscripts, prints, notes etc.) and respective modes and formats of textual presentation: facsimiles of original documents, digitized reproductions, transcripts, edited text versions (diplomatic, critical, genetic, multiple), translations.
3. If you have more time and if available, please provide information about:

• raw data formats (TEI/EpiDoc XML)
• additional material, documentation, visualisation (maps, graphs, networks, statistics)
• integration of external data and resources
• usability, menu, navigation and alternative access to texts and other contents
• intended audience, users, readers (scholars, disciplines, public, communities)

4. If you have even more time, you can provide a general assessment of the edition: What are strengths & weaknesses, highlights & shortcomings? How does the edition compare to other digital or print editions in the field?