Dee Clayman has presided over the formation of the DCB, or Database of Classical Bibliography. The project has, from the beginning, been supported by the APA; the committee for the DCB is part of the current Division of Research. Many of us have made use of the DCB compact disk, which in its most recent version included volumes 45-60 of L'Année Philologique. The advantage of such a tool goes far beyond the convenience of saving us a trip to the library. To take one example, a bibliographical survey of work done on, say, an ethical concept in classical antiquity was practically impossible with the printed volumes, since information would be scattered under any and every author and heaven knows where in the rest of the tome. In the electronic format, a thorough search is a matter of minutes or even seconds. But this was only the beginning. At its latest meeting, and thanks in very large part to the efforts of Dee, the Paris-based center for L'Année Philologique approved, in principle, the merger of the DCB and Année Philologique databases in order to make all of the data available to the public on a new, joint web site, due to open in the fall of 2000 with thirty years of classical bibliography including the most current, yet-to-be-published volumes. The DCB will produce volumes 1-39, and assume responsibility for volumes 40-62 as well. You are aware, no doubt, of the enormous delay attending the publication of volume 65, the last volume to be done entirely by hand. The web site will simply bypass that volume until it is ready and add newer and older volumes as they are completed. We shall at last have an up-to-date, universally available, and easy-to-search bibliography.
