A key part of carrying out good research is using reliable sources. AI may be able to scrape the internet and compose a summary of what it finds, but it can’t distinguish peer-reviewed scholarship from the claims of “some guy” who posted their opinions somewhere. Here we have collected the best starting places for your online research.
*DPU* marks a resource as accessible (i.e., subscribed) through the DPU library system.
PRIMARY SOURCES (ancient texts):
- Perseus Digital Library (digitized ancient texts, commentaries, and dictionaries; open-access)
- Loeb Classical Library (digitized ancient texts and translations; *DPU*)
- Dickinson College Commentaries (digitized ancient texts, with notes, vocabulary, etc.; open-access)
- Packard Humanities Institute Latin Texts (search full texts of Latin authors; open-access)
- Attalus (massive list of ancient sources and translations, esp. for the Hellenistic period; open-access)
- The Latin Library (digitized older editions of original texts; useful but not authoritative; open-access)
- Thesaurus Linguae Grecae (Greek dictionary and thesaurus; some content open-access)
- Thesaurus Linguae Latinae (Latin dictionary and thesaurus; open-access)
- Tesserae (at U. Buffalo: search for intertextuality: that is, phrases that appear across texts in space and time)
MATERIAL CULTURE SOURCES (art, artifacts, architecture, and inscriptions):
- Artstor (image database for art, artifacts, sites, etc.; *DPU*)
- Yorescape and Virtual Museum (app & website to visit reconstructed ancient cities and sites, and 3D digitizations of ancient sculpture; register with a DPU email address for free access; *DPU*)
- J.C. Golvin’s brilliant Reconstructions of the Ancient World (open-access)
- Classical Art Research Centre (Oxford; includes the Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum & Gandhara Connections and he Beazley Archive Database of Painted Greek Pottery; open-access)
- American Academy in Rome Research Databases and Digital Collections (open-access)
- Arachne (millions of objects and images from antiquity, from the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut; open-access)
- Fasti Online (archaeological field reports on survey, excavation and conservation since 2000; open-access)
- Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum ([CIL]; some volumes available online; open-access)
- Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum ([CIG]; Packard Humanities Institute; open-access)
- Epigraphik-Datenbank Clauss/Slaby (database of ancient inscriptions; open-access)
- Roman Inscriptions of Britain Online ([RIB]; illustrated database of Latin inscriptions from Britain; open-access)
- Roman Provincial Coinage Online (Oxford; open-access)
- Online Coins of the Roman Empire, American Numismatic Society [ANS] (open-access); Identify a coin here (also ANS)
- Portable Antiquities Scheme, United Kingdom (open-access)
MUSEUMS (online collections):
- British Museum (digital collection; open-access)
- Louvre Museum (digital collection; open-access)
- Staatliche Museen zu Berlin collections online: Greece & Rome, Egypt & Prehistory (open-access)
- National Archaeological Museum, Athens, Collections (open-access)
- Digital Collections of the Museums in the Comune of Rome, and the National Archaeological Museums, Rome (open-access)
- Metropolitan Museum, New York (digital collection; open-access)
- Museum of Fine Arts, Boston: Art of Ancient Egypt, Nubia, & the Near East, and Art of Ancient Greece and Rome (digital collections; open-access)
- Getty Museum: Ancient Collections and Vocabularies (explaining terms used in art, architecture, and conservation; open-access)
- Walters Art Gallery online: Ancient Egypt & Nubia, Ancient Near East, Ancient Greece, Roman Empire (open-access)
- ISAC: Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, West Asia & North Africa (U. Chicago, open-access)
- Indiana University Museum of Art, Ancient Collections (open-access)
- Kelsey Museum of Archaeology (digital collection of this U. Michigan museum; open-access)
SECONDARY SOURCES (modern scholarship):
- DePauw Library Search page (search and refine using keywords)
- DPU library Recommended Digital Tools (download the LibKeyNomad browser extension!)
- Google Scholar (search and refine using keywords; put exact terms in “double quotes“)
- JSTOR (archive of full-text articles from scores of Classics journals as well as books; *DPU*)
- L’Année philologique (a comprehensive bibliography of the Classical World with nearly 1.5 million entries; *DPU*)
- Projekt DYABOLA (subject bibliography for Mediterranean art and archaeology; *DPU*)
- Brill’s New Pauly Online (encyclopedia of the Classical World; *DPU*)
- BMCR (Bryn Mawr Classical Review; full-texts reviews of scholarly work since 1990)
- AWOL – Ancient World Online (long-running blog with the latest on what’s happening; open-access)
- List of Classics Online journals (Society for Classical Studies; open-access)
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- Nestor (bibliography of the prehistoric Aegean world & Indo-European linguistics; open-access)
- Diotíma (resource on women, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, status, etc. in the ancient Mediterranean)
- Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory & Criticism (open-access)
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- Ancient World Mapping Center (at UNC-Chapel Hill; open-access)
- ORBIS (Stanford Geospatial Network Model of the Roman World; open-access)
- Digital Atlas of the Roman Empire (U. Gothenburg; open-access)
- Cultural Atlas of Mesopotamia and the Ancient Near East (1992; PDF uploaded by author to Academia.edu; open-access)