Last year, the editors of Classical Review announced that we would begin reviewing digital projects. This move recognises both the importance of digital resources for how we study and teach the ancient world, and the important roles that scholars of antiquity have played in the development of the digital humanities ecosystem.

We hope that expanding our remit beyond the reviews of books will better recognise the excellent scholarship that underpins work disseminated through digital projects. Too often, the labour, expertise, and ingenuity that produce tools relied upon as critical tools for teaching and research goes unacknowledged. We also hope that these reviews will enable all of our colleagues in ancient world studies to better understand the potential inherent in digital dissemination, how digital resources are created, developed, and maintained, and how they can be best used.

To mark the publication of the first three reviews of digital projects in Classical Review, they will be free to read for the next 12 months:

Catherine Dobias on Collection of Greek Ritual Norms (CGRN): read here

Evan Levine on The Sphakia Survey Internet Edition: read here

Jonathan Prag on Attic Inscriptions Online [AIO]: read here

Taken together, these reviews demonstrate the breadth of work in digital Classics being undertaken by philologists, archaeologists, historians, anthropologists and technologists at all career stages, working collaboratively in many instances for decades. They highlight how, in many ways, such projects continue and supplement the work of traditionally-published resources while bringing with them their own particular benefits and challenges. Questions of sustainability continually stalk digital projects, and such issues are inevitably in the minds of our reviewers. Nonetheless, balancing these are clear considerations of the advantages that digital technologies provide.

Working with digital methods brings clear opportunities for improving access – it is notable that all three projects reviewed are made freely available to anyone with an internet connection. This commitment to broadening the audience for what might have once been thought of as the most scholarly of scholarly work – the editing of epigraphy – is praised by Prag in his review of the AIO, a “genuinely valuable resource” that foregrounds high-quality translation and commentary work, along with analyses of parts of the corpus, including material created specifically for schools.

The value of accessibility also pervades Levine’s review of the latest iteration of the Sphakia Survey Internet Edition, an initiative whose “novel digital strategy” made available in the early years of the 21st century multimedia resources and preliminary publications relating to work undertaken in South-East Crete through the 1980s and ‘90s. As such, it provides – and preserves – a “glimpse into the experiences, decisions and discoveries of a formative project that has influenced so much interesting and important landscape, ethnographic, and ecological fieldwork in Greece”.

Benefits also accrue to how – and how much – material is accessed through these projects. Moving into the digital sphere frees us up to reconsider the structural precepts and practical limitations that control how we organise information. Dobias highlights how the CGRN can “provide much more abundant information than traditional corpora printed on paper might do”, as well furnish continual additions, corrections, and updates to its material such that this project grows richer and more extensive with time. It has, as she points out, retained many of the familiar elements of published books, but its database structure opens up enhanced search functionality, which allows material to be brought together in new, perhaps previously unnoticed combinations.

Classical Review always welcomes digital projects for review. Details on how to submit your project for review are here, or to volunteer as a reviewer please email classicalreview@classicalassociation.org