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Peer Review

THE LATIN LIBRARY

Reviewed:

Feb 15, 2004 by World Languages
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Ratings

Overall Rating: 4.0 stars
Content Quality: 4.5 stars
Effectiveness: 5.0 stars
Ease of Use: 4.8 stars
Overview:

Part of the larger site called The Classics Page at Ad Fontes Academy, The
Latin Library is an extensive and growing collection of Latin texts from early
classical times through the golden age and silver Latin. The texts are presented
in their entirety, in a clear, straightforward design. The purpose of the
site is to give easy access to texts for either on-line use or for downloading. The texts are not annotated, which can be preferable for the corpus linguistics
researcher.
Type of Material:

Collection of digital texts in Latin. English indices and menus.
Recommended Uses:

On-line reading, in-class projection (including Smart Board projection and
teaching, for which it is ideal), downloading into a word-processing document
for instructor annotation and distribution to students in electronic or paper
formats.
Technical Requirements:

Any browser and word-processing software.
Identify Major Learning Goals:

Teaching or learning Latin language, literature and culture; developing reading and
writing competency.
Target Student Population:

Intermediate to advanced, college, and graduate students; Latin teachers and
scholars.
Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:

A minimum of one year of Latin or intermediate proficiency in reading and
grammar is needed to make the best use of the texts. For more advanced learners
and teachers, any "author" oriented course can benefit from this site.

Content Quality

Rating:
Strengths:

The collection features most of the classical texts used in the curriculum -
Vergil, Livy, Tacitus, Ovid, Cicero - plus numerous others that scholars often
refer to - Varro, Valerius Maximus, Pliny, to name only a few of these. Under the category "Ius Romanum" the library includes Justinian's Digest, the Institutes of Gaius and the 12 Tables; and under "Christian Latin" Jerome, Tertullian, and many others, including a number of Papal Bulls. The Latin Library even contains some works from the early modern and contemporary period. The collection continues to show most of its growth in the contemporary period.

These online texts are a goldmine for all Latin students beyond the elementary
level, for teachers at those levels, and for researchers at all levels.
Ten years ago one had usually to start from scratch, with scanning or keyboarding
in the texts. Additions to the collection have been extensive over the recent
years, and are conveniently listed in reverse chronological order by month for
the current year, and then by year going back to 1998, so the researcher eager
for new digital texts can quickly check for the latest additions to the corpus
of Hydatius or Tertullian.
Concerns:

1. Some of the more recently added texts are not complete, and users need to be
aware that many errors remain in these texts. For example:

Cicero, In Cat. 4. 8: ?horribiles cnstodias? , and Cicero, In Cat. 4.21: ?et no
bilissimus Perses honestavit? where somehow an extra space has crept in, and
4.23: ?quae dunn erit in vestris fixa mentibus? , dunn being a scanning error
for dum. A close examination of these often read texts of Cicero will turn about
1 error every 200 words, a decent effort at scanning, but still an inconvenience for a researcher using this body for corpus linguistics analysis, and confusing for the intermediate undergraduate who might spend needless time searching for "dunn".


2. The different texts, submitted by a host of sources (see
http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/cred) have widely varying degrees of accuracy.
Suetonius? Nero, which this reviewer has used with a class, is abounding with
errors, e.g., Nero 2, ?quod aeneam barbam habret,?; 3.1: ?Reliquit filium
omnibus gentis soae procul dubio praeferendum.? 5: ?nihilo modetius vixit;? and
many more.

Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool

Rating:
Strengths:

Teachers will find here almost all the texts included in the traditional Latin
curriculum. For teaching purposes, except perhaps for Medieval Latin courses and other than for correcting the errors in the digital texts, the collection suffices for most undergraduate and graduate courses.

Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty

Rating:
Strengths:

The simple, consistent design and the absence of graphics, links or other
non-textual accessories provides a good environment for on-line reading or
in-class projection and makes downloading easier. The entirety of the site can
be downloaded, stored locally on even a modest computer, and used in a classroom
without the need for a live Internet connection.
Concerns:

1. Searching can be problematic, and limited usually to a single book of a
particular author. Titles cannot readily be searched, and even authors can be
tricky to find, with two separate menus (one tabular, the other pull-down).


2. The Greek that appears in Latin texts is variously handled; anyone who has
scanned Greek is familiar with the gibberish often produced by inadequate OCR
software. The author acknowledges that all instances of gibberish have not been corrected in the collection.
Other Issues and Comments:

1. The web site invites new submissions and editors of both existing and newly
scanned texts. It might be helpful to indicate, perhaps with an "updated on" date, when corrections have been included into a particular text.


2. There are still some notable areas for addition: the sections under ?Roman
Inscriptions? and ?Roman Epitaphs? are notably brief and incomplete.
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