Key tools for remote study and exams
These resources may be especially useful in your remote study and open book exams during the pandemic. They were originally designed for Cambridge students, but may be useful for others too. Some resources require you to log in through your institution. For Cambridge students, I'd recommend setting up a Cambridge VPN which should make accessing some resources easier.
Finding new bibliography
Accessing bibliography
Viewing/searching texts
Vocabulary and parsing
Metre
Typing Greek
Bibliographical software
Further useful links and resources are available at:
Finding new bibliography
- L'Année philologique - a handy searchable tool to find classical bibliography on any subject.
- Google Scholar - search for an article/book, then see who's cited it to trace bibliographic threads!
- Oxford Bibliographies: Classics - contains mainy bibliographies guides for key Classics areas
Accessing bibliography
- Check on iDiscover - most articles should be available through JSTOR or other sources, and an increasing number of books are also available online too (e.g. Oxford Scholarship Online, Cambridge Core).
- Check the relevant Moodle page for your course and the associated 'Reading Lists Online' link - the Classics Faculty library often puts up scans of rarer bits of bibliography on there.
- It's always worth a Google search and a check of Academia.edu to see if an author has uploaded an online copy of their article, chapter, or even book.
- The Cambridge University Library's scan and deliver service - you can request scans of an article or book chapter (and make up to 5 requests per day). Scans should be delivered within 48 hours. So with a bit of forward planning, you could get pdfs of some library-only scholarship. I'd recommend working together with your supervision partner(s) and pooling resources with this, rather than doubling up lots of requests! Use this to request scans from both the UL and the Classics Faculty library.
- Google Books - often allows a 'preview' of some parts of a book (as does Amazon book preview as well!)
- Archive.org - contains many books etc., especially those that are out of copyright.
Viewing/searching texts
- Loeb online - online (and searchable) versions of all Loebs.
- PHI Latin Texts - Latin texts, with word search and concordance function
- TLG (Thesaurus Linguae Graecae) - a very handy tool where you can search to see where Greek words appear ('text search') and browse many texts ('canon'); the text search function includes 'lemma' searches (searching for e.g. the nominative of a noun or 1sg present form of a verb will show up all attestations in any form - nifty!) and 'proximity' searches (so you could e.g. search to see where ποικίλος and ἀνήρ appear within five words of each other). It's also good at parsing, and tends to be more accurate than Perseus (just click on a word in a text).
- Nodictionaries.com - handy glossing of all words in many Latin texts (and you can copy and paste your own Latin texts in too) - though no parsing
Vocabulary and parsing
- Perseus Word Study Tool - a quick and easy way to parse a word and gain access to various dictionary entries - though it can be a bit hit and miss.
- TLG (as above): it also links up with a range of Greek dictionaries
- The Logeion App (available on iOS) also gives good digital access to dictionaries
- Wiktionary seems pretty decent for Latin
Metre
- When translating, scanning Latin poetry can be useful in determing the case of some nouns (e.g. whether puella is nominative/vocative or ablative). If you're struggling to scan a hexameter or pentameter, you could try typing the verse into METRON, an online scansion tool! It might not be 100% accurate, but might give you a helping hand (e.g. in highlighting elisions).
Typing Greek
- You should be able to add 'Greek' as one of your keyboard languages in your settings, but accents can sometimes be fiddly. You could also just copy and paste texts from TLG or Loeb online etc. (but remember that a grave accent at the end of a Greek word becomes an acute when it's no longer followed by another Greek word: so καὶ ἄλλοι but καί)! Beware of copying and pasting from Perseus because its uses the wrong punctuation sometimes!
- TypeGreek.com - especially good for sublinear dots (just use '@')
- RoboGreek - free utility for typing Greek
Bibliographical software
- Now could also be a good moment to start using some referencing management software like Endnote, Mendeley or Zotero. They are good tool for managing and keeping track of your bibliography (and associated pdfs), but they're also great at formatting and syncing your bibliographies and footnotes in your written work. They take a little while to get used to, but could be worth experimenting with over the coming months!
Further useful links and resources are available at:
- Cambridge Classics Faculty's Libguides page.
- Cambridge University's Electronic Collection Management - including great advice (#10) on getting full access to articles not in the University's E-Resource collections