Interview date: February 8, 2010
Medford, Massachusetts and Centennial, Colorado

Greg Crane

Summary:

From the start, the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae designed all the data with concern for preservation and sustainability. The first data discs didn’t look very good and Crane and his colleagues knew it shouldn’t be made into their archival medium. In the 1980’s, it took years to get things encoded. Crane remembers thinking how he could have released the data much earlier had different technology been used. At times, it seemed like a wasteful investment and expenditure.

David Smith, a computer science professor at UMASS/Amherst was able to get the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae on the web without more funding.  The basic services of Perseus emerged in 1994. They were selling CD’s and the TLG was moving on the web, and it was clear that there was no future for the CDS. Because of the design of the data, thinking like libraries and librarians in terms of scale, the TLG was able to make this transformation and maintain collections for over 20 years. Crane saw the whole nature of scholarship change. The thing Crane didn’t appreciate 20 years ago that he thinks about now is that the TLG is a publication medium that you can use to make ideas more generally accessible. Ancient texts of Greek and Latin became more available through the linking of texts and dictionaries.

Crane did not appreciate the degree to which people are able to contribute (on sites like Wikipedia) and the dissemination of the power to create and participate in intellectual life. Crane did not anticipate the importance of this new phenomenon and its impact.