The Perseus Project

Description: The Perseus Project is a growing digital library of resources for the research and teaching of the ancient world. The project has expanded hugely since it started in 1987 and now contains over 380 texts in Greek and translation, art objects from over 70 museums and many detailed site plans with images. The content is also expanding into Renaissance source materials, concentrating at present on putting the complete works of Christopher Marlowe on the web. The project recently received a grant of $180,000 from the National Endowment for the Humanities to extend coverage further still into Roman civilisation, the development of which will be closely linked with VRoma, a project to create a virtual community and internet gateway for the teaching of classics.

The entire content list of Perseus is available on the web site. In summary, the current version covers most major authors of the classical period, a number of text tools and lexica including the Liddell-Scott-Jones lexicon, an atlas of Greece produced from satellite images, catalogues of architecture, coins, sculpture, sites and vases and its own encyclopedia. There are also essays and reference works available such as a set of specially written essays on vase painters. For teachers there are online help guides that other teachers have written for their students, observations from those who have used Perseus in their teaching, and links to the home pages of courses that use Perseus. A major use of Perseus in teaching has been allowing students to produce hypertext essays, linking the web sites' texts and images into their own work. Several examples of students work can be seen online.

The first edition of the project in 1992 was published only as a Mac compatible CD-ROM but the number of platforms supported has grown since then. The Mac CD-ROM of Perseus 2.0 is still available but there is also now a web site at http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/ and Perseus Tk, a platform independant version of which a development release is available to download from the web site. The platform independent software is at an early stage in its development but the web version of Perseus is now comparable in content to the CD-ROM, apart from some images that are unavailable. The CD-ROM is generally the fastest version of Perseus, an advantage if you are going to be using it a great deal, and the web site is the most up-to-date edition, with all new material published there first.

Requirements:For all of the CD-ROM versions, an Apple Macintosh running System 7.0 or higher with at least 8 MB of RAM and a CD-ROM drive. For the Comprehensive Edition of Perseus 2.0, a multiple-disc CD-ROM drive or an external hard drive of at least 2 gigabytes is recommended by the suppliers.

Further information: The Perseus Project and Beyond How Building a Digital Library Challenges the Humanities and Technology, Gregory Crane, D-Lib Magazine January 1998.

Distributor:Yale University Press Special Projects Department, PO Box 209040, New Haven, CT 06520 Tel: 800-987-7323 Fax: 800-777-9253. Order details are available online from the Yale University Press Catalogue at http://www.yale.edu/yup/Perseus2.html

Price: Comprehensive Edition: $350 (or $245 for version 1.0 owners). Concise Edition: $150 ($100 for version 1.0 owners). Both are single user licences, site licence information is available from Yale University Press.

The Internet edition of the project is available at http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/. Most of the content of the Comprehensive CD-ROM edition is available online but unless your institution has a site licence not all of the 24,000 images will be accessible. This situation is currently under review, with the latest updates on this available from the Perseus web site.

Lastly, Perseus Tk, the platform independent version is now available as a second development release at http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/Dev/PerseusTk.html.

Version available at CTI Centre: Perseus 2.0 Concise Edition. Site licence for the Perseus web site.

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Guide to Digital Resources 1996-98. Not to be republished in any form without the permission of CTI Textual Studies.

HTML Author: Sophie Clarke
Document Created: 11 June 1998
Document Modified: 11 August 1998

The URL of this document is http://info.ox.ac.uk/ctitext/resguide/resources/p150.html