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          Path: Digital Library Projects  : APIS : DDBDP link syntax


Citations to the Duke Databank of Documentary Papyri need to be specially formulated by the contributing institution in order to provide accurate linking,

E.g., for Columbia:   dd510_dd | 1 | P.Col.:8:205
For Berkeley:          dd510_dd | 1 | P.Tebt.:3.2:880

Note: If an item is unpublished, no dd510_dd field should be present. If it is desired to explicitly indicate that an item is unpublished, this may be indicated in a general note, e.g., dd500 | 1 | Recto and verso unpublished.   See below for background & further details.


The following form may be used for testing 'well-formed' DDBDP citations:

In the form box below, after "Perseus:abo:pap," key the standard collection abbreviation (see Perseus Table of Contents for list) with all periods, followed by a colon + volume number (arabic) + colon + document number (arabic), e.g., P.Oxy.:4:731 ; SB:6:9259  ;  P.Hib.:1:64


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Examples of correctly formatted DDBDP citations

  P.NYU:1:16
  Chrest.Wilck.:448
  P.Col.:10:265
  P.Fay.:31:
  P.Hib.:1:64
  P.Mich.:3:159
  P.Oxy.:4:731
  P.Princ.:1:10
  P.Tebt.:2:401
  P.Tebt.Wall:4
  P.Yale:1:37
  SB:6:9259
   

BACKGROUND MATERIAL ON DDBDP CITATIONS

A.  Syntax for DDBDP Links

APIS URL linkages to the Duke Databank of Documentary Papyri are formulated according to the following specifications:

"http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus:abo:pap,"
  +   Perseus papyrus collection abbreviation, w/ periods & w/o spaces /See Note 1 below
  +   ":" + volume number in Arabic numerals (no leading or trailing zeros) /See Note 6 below
  +   ":" + document number in Arabic numerals (no leading or trailing zeros)

A full new-style URL for a Perseus database lookup would thus be:

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus:abo:pap,P.Yale:1:41

For information about the previous URL/link citation style see section E below.

NOTES:

Note 1: The current list of Perseus/DDBDP collections and abbreviations is found at:

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cache/perscoll_DDBDP.html

For those converting from old-style Perseus/DDBDP URL links, an annotated list with the previous "Source ID" numbers and the current abbreviations may be found at:

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/libraries/inside/projects/apis/documentation/perseus_toc.html

Note 2: All periods shown in the Perseus/DDBDP abbreviation must be included in the APIS DDBDP citation, e.g. P.Oxy.:4:731 will work but P.Oxy:4:731 will not, since the period after Oxy is missing.

Note 3: No spaces should be present in the formatted citation, e.g., P.Mich.:3:159 will work but P.^Mich.:3:159 will not, where ^ represents a space.

Note 4: Periods cannot be substituted for colons, e.g., SB:6:9259 will work but SB:6.9259 will not.

Note 5: The volume designation may not be omitted for "volume 1" of a multivolume work, e.g., P.Hib.:1:64 works but P.Hib.:64 does not.

Note 6: If a work is published in one volume entire, omit both volume number and the preceding colon, e.g.  P.Tebt.Wall:4 not  P.Tebt.Wall::4

Note 7:  P.Fay. references appear to be an exception to the one volume entire rule (see Note 6 above) and require a trailing colon, e.g., P.Fay.:31:,  P.Fay.:345:   [updated 8/28/03 /spd]

Note 8:  Special guidelines for P.Tebt. volume numbers

Assign DDBDP P.Tebt. volume number according to the following scheme:

If P.Tebt. pagenum < 267 vol = "1"
   Else if P.Tebt.pagelnum < 698 vol = "2"
       Else if P.Tebt. pagenum < 825 vol = "3.1"
           Else if P.Tebt. volnum < 1094 vol = "3.2"
OTHERWISE volnum = "4"

Note that volume 3 must be cited as either 3.1 or 3.2.

EXAMPLE

      cu510 | 1 | P.Tebt., III.1031

becomes      

     cu510_dd | 1 | P.Tebt.:3.2:1031

 


b. Phase II Creation of APIS-DDBDP Links

Only one partner (Yale) contributed metadata to the project that included explicit DDBDP links. Unfortunately, the Duke Databank syntax change midway through APIS Phase II 'broke' those.

To meet the Phase II project goal of including direct DDBDP links in APIS, it was decided to attempt programmatically to create these links from textual citation data present in the records.  In brief, this approach involved attempting to locate a publication number in each record--in whatever format it might appear--then converting it into the new syntax and creating a new-style DDBDP URL link.  E.g.,

        P.Tebt., II.645; SB, XVIII, no. 13365

was scanned and stored as:

      dd510_dd | 1 | P.Tebt.:2:645

which then in the APIS interface became

       http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus:abo:pap,P.Tebt.:2:645

The automated way in which these links were created, while fairly successful overall, had some limitations, e.g.,

  • only one DDBDP link was created per record
  • DDBDP links were incorrectly created for volumes not yet included in Perseus
  • DDBDP links were incorrectly created for literary papyri, which are not included in DDBDP
  • Links were created only for the following collections: P.Col., P.Mich., P.Oxy., P.Princ., P.Tebt., P.Yale, O.Mich.

If in the future APIS partner records can be revised to include all relevant publication citations in the new Perseus syntax in a standard location in the record, it will be possible to have more complete and accurate links.

See also Programmatic Conversion of Old-style Links to New Link Syntax


C.  May 12, 2000, Correspondence from David Smith, Perseus Project, about new XML-based search system & linking syntax
Sender: dasmith@perseus.tufts.edu 
Date: Fri, 12 May 2000 14:17:09 -0400 
From: David Smith <dasmith@perseus.tufts.edu> 
Organization: Perseus Project 
To: Stephen P Davis <daviss@columbia.edu> 
CC: Roger Bagnall <bagnall@columbia.edu>, David Millman <dsm@columbia.edu>
Subject: Re: Fwd: external web queries to DDBDP 

Dear Dr. Davis,

Thanks for bringing this to my attention. In the past several months,
we've developed a new XML-based document system. While most of the texts
on the Perseus site now use this system, the DDBDP has been still
presented in the old Pandora-like interface. At this point, all of the
DDBDP are upgraded to the new system, but the searching needs a few
finishing touches.

Since the web pages you pass along mention linking to documents, I would
suggest linking to the new versions of the texts which are now available
on our site. The format of the URL is as follows (text in quotes is
literal):

"http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus:abo:pap,"
papyrus abbreviation as per the Oates et al. checklist
":"
arabic volume number (if appropriate; no padding)
":"
arabic document number (no padding)


Thus P.Oxy. 4.731 is:

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus:abo:pap,P.Oxy.:4:731

and SB 16.12581 is:

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus:abo:pap,SB:16:12581

A list of all the papyrus volumes can be found at:

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/perscoll?collection=DDBDP

When browsing the DDBDP, you may notice that the URL may contain other
identifiers, such as the internal document number or a file offset. For
purposes of outside linking, these should be ignored and the form above
used.

The new document system uses a browser cookie to keep track of users'
font preferences. In the sidebar of every page, there is a link
"Configure display" where the user can, among other things, set the
Greek encoding to SMK, Beta code, Unicode, etc. Once this is set, the
encoding will be used every time the user returns to the site. For this
reason, there is no Greek encoding pop-up as in the past.

Please do let me know is you have further questions about this new
system.

Best regards,

David Smith

Change Log
  • 2003-10-05:  Clarified DDBDP citation format for P.Tebt. references (Note 8) /SPD

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