By the heads of the literary documentation working group for the C. P. Cavafy library, Sofia Zisimopoulou, Doctor at the School of Fine Arts, Alexandros Katsigiannis, Academic Fellow at the School of Philosophy of the University of Crete, Christina Kostoglou, PhD Candidate at the Hellenic Open University, and the scientific advisor Christina Dounia, Professor Emeritus of the Modern Greek Department at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.
The objective of the literary documentation group for the C. P. Cavafy library was to present, highlight and annotate the 966 titles of the C.P. Cavafy library in a digital form. The books are sorted according to the published catalogue of the library by Michaila Karampini-Iatrou (C.P. Cavafy Library, Ermis, Athens 2003). The literary group enriched the details of the items with further information, for instance their subject categorisation, any handwritten notes therein, the types of inserts, but also their connection with the works by C.P. Cavafy. Taking into account the integration of the documentation in a digital environment, the group created access points that fulfill the needs of this project, while at the same time aid the user in searching for the given piece of information. With multiple access points (keywords), the user of the digital collection can be updated about the subject traits of the books owned by the poet, learn which of them have handwritten notes or inserts, recreate C.P. Cavafy’s relations through written dedications and bookplates in the books, as well as associating the reading preferences of the poet from Alexandreia with items in his archive. The user can also learn which authors resurface in the poet’s library and explore the presence of certain publishing houses, print shops and publishers in his library.
In this context, it should be noted that the documentation of the library may differ noticeably from the documentation of the Cavafy archive, but it has been harmonized to a large extent with the structure of information in the Digital Collection of the Cavafy Archive, in order to facilitate the user in their search but also potential comparison of items found in the archive vs. the library.
The literary documentation group focused on describing the books as physical objects, while at the same time providing information about their content as well. To this end, the field titled “Description” follows as a standard the bibiliological description of the Bibliology Workshop “Philippos Iliou” (Benaki Museum). At the same time, the group annotated the given items in the field titled “Comments” only where deemed necessary. Such cases include highlighting a particular trait of a publication, a reference to another book of the library or to a study of the works by C. P. Cavafy that has transcribed part of the book. Furthermore, books with uncut or partially cut parts have been commented in order for the user to understand which of their parts are available in digitized form.
With regards to the digitization of the Cavafy library books and aiming to highlight the poet’s reading profile, digitization concerned the main contextual details of each book, the handwritten notes and dedications, the bookplates and inserts found, the pages with the published poems of Cavafy as well as studies or references to Cavafy and his family.
At the same time, the group worked systematically aiming to highlight the reading indices of each book. The transcriptions of the handwritten notes and inserts are mentioned in detail and marked with different colors according to the type of intervention detected on the written text. Even indiscernible points are marked with special colors so that the reader can understand the lack of transcription of the relevant word or phrase.
The aimed both at highlighting the poet’s reading profile and at exploring his mental and cultural context. By browsing the digital collection, we hope that each reader will have the opportunity to delve deeply into the interests of C. P. Cavafy as a reader and his bibliographical sources as well as the cultural history of his time, thus forging new paths of research.