EELISA Podcast Season 2 – Episode 8: When Texts Meet Tech: Data Standards and Collaboration in Textual Scholarship

What happens when centuries-old words meet the languages of data and technology? In an ever-changing digital world, archives and scholarly texts can be transformed into structured datasets, making knowledge more accessible and interconnected. At the centre of this lies the discipline of digital philology, where computational tools such as semantic annotation and AI enhance textual criticism and enable large-scale analysis and digital scholarly editions.

In its eighth episode, Valentina Nieri, researcher in Italian Philology, and Camillo Carlo Pellizzari di San Girolamo, PhD student in Classics,explorehow digital standards, linked open data, and collaborative platforms are reshaping textual scholarship.

Texts as Data: Metadata, Authority Files, and Copyright in the Digital Age

What does it mean to treat a text as data? It means looking beyond its content and focusing on the structured information around it — metadata like the author or publication date, as well as named entities such as people, places, or events. This information can be organised in databases and linked with others to compare and enrich data.

One important result of this process is the creation of authority files. These do not collect all records, but instead standardise key entities — such as authors or titles — by assigning consistent names and identifiers. This allows different systems to work together and forms the basis of tools like library catalogues.

Digital philology relies heavily on structured databases, and limited access to them can create significant challenges, including copyright infringement. That is particularly relevant in the case of medieval texts, where the critical editor – who digitises the text – can hold the rights to them up to 20 years, which can complicate digital access and reuse if this information is not updated and attribution is not clear. As Valentina Nieri highlights:

For some texts, it was literally impossible to determine whether the edition was still under copyright. And you’re left deciding between delaying the digitisation of that text or adopting an “opt-out” strategy, publishing and taking a text down only if someone raises a claim.

For these reasons, having access to updated, accurate, and interoperable databases is essential to ensure reliable research, legal clarity, and effective collaboration across digital scholarly environments.

Beyond Tools: Is Digital Philology a Transformation or a Phase?

Through Digital Philology, scholars can gain a clearer and more structured view of information in a digital environment. It can accelerate established research methods and open up new forms of analysis. But can it be considered more than just a tool? Even with its implementation, traditional skills remain essential. Critical judgement, historical knowledge, and strong linguistic competence are still necessary to interpret texts meaningfully. As Camillo highlights:

This isn’t just about tools becoming more fashionable. What’s really new is the shared infrastructure: standards, open data, and collaborative platforms. These don’t disappear when a tool becomes obsolete. Once texts are structured and connected, they can be reused in ways we can’t fully predict yet. So digital philology isn’t a passing phase, it’s more like a change in the conditions under which philology happens, much like the shift from manuscripts to print was in the past.

Thus, it can be concluded that Digital Philology is not a passing technological phase, but a structural transformation in the practice of scholarship.

Valentina Nieri

She is a researcher in Italian Philology at the Scuola Normale Superiore, where she earned her PhD in 2018 with a dissertation on the Tuscan vernacular translations of Palladius’ Opus agriculturae. She has previously held research positions at the Università di Siena and at the Scuola Normale Superiore, contributing to national projects focused on the renewal and interoperability of the Opera del Vocabolario Italiano corpus.

Camillo Carlo Pellizzari Di San Girolamo

He graduated in Classics at the Università di Pisa (BA 2020, MA 2022). He was an undergraduate student in the Class of Humanities at the Scuola Normale Superiore from 2017 to 2022 and has been a PhD student in Classics at the same institution since 2022. His research interests center on Greek rhetoric of the imperial age, with particular emphasis on declamatory literature. He also works in library and information science, particularly in authority control and the use of Wikidata for cataloging and metadata management.