TLG

[jod@ccat.sas.upenn.edu (James J. O'Donnell)]

Professor Maria Pantelia, the director of the TLG project is out of the
country, but by chance I had discussed the licensing question with her
last week.  The Thesaurus Linguae Graecae is a comprehensive database (the
only such) of classical and medieval Greek literature in the original
language, running to about 80 million words.  No classics program can live
without it, and many other specialists call on it.  It has hitherto (since
1985) been available for license on CD -- but the license has been the
kind that academic departments sign thoughtlessly all the time and the CD
usually lived in a machine in a classics department, though libraries
often held copies as well.

The new WWW version is a great improvement in a hundred ways over dealing
with the CD's.  The license, however, is issued by the Regents of the
University of California, the legal owner of the project, and the
requirements that folks are finding difficult are set initially by lawyers
for the university system, *not* by the project itself.  When requests
arise, the project director needs to take them back to lawyers at the
other end of the state, etc.  Hence difficulties, frustrating for all
concerned.

I have shared the list's comments on the subject with Professor Pantelia
and hope that when she returns to the states later this month she will be
able to write a note to the liblicense list updating the possibilities.

Jim O'Donnell
Classics, U. of Penn
jod@ccat.sas.upenn.edu