Rostovtzeff Project - Introduction

University of Bologna and University of Udine



1. Background
2. Objectives
3. Outcomes and results
4. Open questions
5. Timing
6. Cooperation and Contact adresses

1. Background

It is well known that the private letters, editorial contracts, political pamphlets, texts of unpublished lectures, essays and personal notes of Michael Ivanovich Rostovtzeff are dispersed among several European and US Institutions, University Libraries and Publishers' archives.
Only a small part of this important documentation has been studied and properly published in scholarly journals or used as a source for the history of historiography about the ancient world or, less frequently, for the history of european politics and culture in the first half of the 20th century.
The main obstacle as to the use of this material is obviously the problem of retrieval and selection of information among the unpublished documents.
A complete and exaustive hard copy edition of Rostovtzeff's papers would require a huge amount of time and work, and would pose the problem of a strict selection of the ephemeral data in order to reduce the publication costs. For this reason this project aims towards the creation of an electronic edition, which seems more cost effective, flexible and open to a cooperative undertaking.

2. Objectives

We can define the following as the main objectives of the Project:

  1. The creation of a directory of institutions and scholars who keep or study Rostovtzeff material.
  2. An inventory of unpublished documents (letters, contracts, notes, books, pamphlets, text of lectures) that can be considered part of a 'Rostovteff archive' or linked with his person and work.
  3. The cataloguing of the documents in standard records. The records will be included in a database, or in several linked databases, according to the special feature of the documents.
  4. An electronic edition of unpublished and published documents and the creation of an integrated information system available over the Internet. In this respect it will be possible to integrate a searchable database of the records with the text - and if necessary even with the image - of the document, to link related issues, easily retrieve documents through browsing indexes of references to modern scholars or persons, to ancient sources or names.
  5. An electronic bibliography of studies of and about Rostovtzeff, an electronic edition of unpublished reviews of Rostovtzeff's works.
  6. The publishing of full text scientific studies available on the web integrated with the above mentioned electronic edition of the sources.
  7. Creation of a space open to partnership with other European institutions that are interested in implementing the project.

3. Outcomes and results

A prototype version of the project can be seen in these web pages.
The present example has been prepared with letters drawn from: G. Bongard Levin, Yu. Litvinenko, C. Bonnet, A. Marcone,
Aperçu préliminaire de la correspondance entre Franz Cumont et Mikhail Rostovtzeff, Bulletin de l'Institut Historique Belge de Rome, 70 (2000), 349-412, G. Bongard Levin, A. Marcone, «Ora devo cercare di vivere». Una richiesta di aiuto di Momigliano a Rostovtzeff, Athenaeum, 83 (1995), pp. 510-512, M.A. Wes, The Correspondence between Rostovtzeff and Westermann. A Note on Gaetano De Sanctis, Historia, 42 (1993), pp. 125-128.
For each letter we created a HTML file and a File-Maker Pro 4.1 record in a provisional sample of database.
The HTML file contains the title, the text of the letter, the explanatory notes contained in the original publication, and reference to the publication.

The HTML files can be reached through a fixed HTML thematical and chronological index, through a search in the database or through the browsing dynamically created indexes: (by archive, by correspondent, by language).
We organized a database sample for the letters in the following fields:

Not all the fields are displayed in the research and results layout, but are necessary for the administration of the database or the indexing of the documents. Obviously new fields or new related databases will be added in order to cover the different features of the documentation.
The database is published on line and can be reached from the project's home page.
Choosing the 'Search in the database' option, the user will access the database through a free full text search and will be allowed to combine the search in the different fields through the boolean operators 'AND' or 'OR'.
The search results are displayed in a summary list, which gives access to the complete records.
Choosing the 'Browse indexes' option the user will reach dynamically generated lists of records which match the selected index: for example browsing the index 'Correspondance Momigliano' would generate the same result as executing a search 'Momigliano' in the field 'Correspondent' .

4. Open questions

  1. The FileMaker Pro software is a very user friendly and flexible software, it allows remote administration and contemporary updating of the database by different remote users, but it is not as powerful as more sophisticated applications.
  2. The HTML encoding for the text edition will not be suitable for a critic edition and will pose some problems for the documents not in the latin alphabet (for example: russian, ancient greek). It would be better, under this respect, to use a SGML or XML encoding, but it will be necessary to study or adapt an acceptable standard among the different institution partecipating in the project.
  3. It would be advisable to study a way of cataloguing in standard library records acceptable nationally and internationally to bibliographic utilities.
  4. Multilinguism: the edition of the Rostovtzeff's paper will respect the original language of the documents, but it will be necessary to decide the administration language of the project and of the home page, presentation and user's instruction.

5. Timing

Open

6. Cooperation and Contact adresses

The project is open to the scientific and technical contribution of anyone interested, and is liable to all the necessary readjustments suggested by the Institutions and Colleagues who will join this proposal.

For the scientific aspects of the project please contact:

Arnaldo Marcone
via dei Baldovini 14
I-50126 Firenze
e-mail: marcand@unifi.it

For technical questions related to the electronic edition and the catalogue please contact:

Alessandro Cristofori
via S. Vitale, 21
I-40125 Bologna
e-mail: acristofori@libero.it

Carla Salvaterra
Dipartimento di Storia Antica
via Zamboni, 38
I-40126 Bologna
e-mail: csalvaterra@lettere.unibo.it



Comments

The URL of this page is: http://www.telemaco.unibo.it:591/michele/project.html

© Rostovtzeff Project 2000-2002