The life of Ovid is a very brief sketch, with content and genre of all of Ovid’s poems characterized save the exile epistles, which deserve the same treatment for the sake of completeness. ![]() The credits establish the basis of the text (close to Kenney 1994) and the notes (Barsby 1973 and McKeown 1989), the impressive array of contributing faculty and students, and the limits of the vocabulary (glosses in the notes do not include DCC Core Latin Vocabulary entries). The introduction is divided into a number of useful sections listed on the left side of the window. Navigating from the DCC home page, which provides access to all of the texts currently available, the reader may choose to proceed directly to the Latin text of Amores I (“Read”, which omits the Epigram), or to Turpin’s “Introduction.” Introduction ![]() Core vocabulary lists of the most common Latin and Greek words are provided, and all words not in the core lists are fully and accurately defined in running vocabulary lists that accompany each section of text.” DCC’s own mission statement on Octodeclares its approach “readerly ” in fact, I could do worse than quote their general description to introduce this review: “Texts are presented in a clean, readable format, with custom-authored notes, specially selected images and maps, and original audio and video content. ![]() But I am enthusiastic, as an educator and an Ovidian, about evaluating its quality and usefulness as a commentary designed for an intermediate college student audience – and intrigued by the idea that, counter to traditional book review experience, constructive suggestions may have an immediate impact on the reviewed text (typos will be directed to Francese as requested on the site). I am unqualified to evaluate the website’s construction and architecture from a technical point of view. This is by way of prefatory caveat for the following review of Turpin’s commentary, if such a narrow word can describe such an expansive project. Content reviews of digital materials belong in BMCR, where they will be widely read by teachers and researchers in the classics fields. Technical reviews of digital materials for teaching and research belong in outlets whose audience is interested in the technical. I agree that publishing separate technical reviews of digital scholarship would be misguided, but for a different reason. As Neil Coffee blogged on Augon the Dickinson Commentaries site, a proposal to revive the free-standing Bryn Mawr Electronic Resources Review, published from 1998 to 2002, was met with skepticism that reviewers could be found. It was only in April 2013 that the first Digital Classics Association conference was held at SUNY Buffalo, and as it happens, the issue of peer review of digital material was addressed. ![]() William Turpin’s commentary on Book I of the Amores is the latest installment in the online Dickinson College Commentaries series, whose admirable mission is the publication of user-friendly college student commentaries that take advantage of the benefits of a digital location to supplement the textual notes with a wealth of material available on the web.
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