Shared access

Giorgio Buccellati – January 2026

The epistemic dimension

A major transformative aspect of a digital database is in the sharing of the input as such: what is published is the input itself. This was never the case in the pre-digital era, something we can look at from three different perspectives.

To some extent, the lack of accessibility was a factor of the type of media available: clearly, there could never be the thought of giving public access to cards in metal drawers cabinets such as those of the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary. Occasional visitors might be afforded the privilege, but essentially the system was never intended to be opened to extraneous users.
It was also a matter of method: each system was designed with a minimum of explicit documentation as to the criteria used for the ise of the database. This was in part due to the fact that the ordering criteria were very few, but in fact there was also the basic assumption that the user, being an “insider,” knew what the criteria were, without the need to articulate them in any sort of coding manual.
Finally, there was a psychological aspect. Personal card files elicited a sense of privacy, amd they were seen as a most personal possession – exemplified in the sahying attributed to an unknown French scholar at the end of World War II: “J’ai tout perdu, mes fiches, ma femme, mon fils!.” ¹

This has changed dramatically with the advent of digitality, on all three levels.

The web is intrinsically worldwide and thus there is no limit to who can use the database, other than for firewalls that intentionally restrict access. The UGR is largely open, if in a beta version while work is in progress. Only a few digital books that are only in the initial stages are{data-toc-label=”“} protected by a password.
The structuring of the database is implemented with very specific categories and corresponding codes. In the UGR, this is represented by the Grammar.
The database is viewed as a finished, published product. It is non only accessible in the sense that it can be opened and used, but also in the sense that it can be modified once downloaded.

Data banks

The notion of a data “bank” is apposite to describe the interactive nature of a database. As if in a bank as a financial institution, users can widthdraw and deposit data. This is not done for all databaases, but it is for some and it is a viable option which was not possible in the pre-digital era.

In the UGR, interaction is active at the level of people involved in the project. The central repository of data on the server is accessible to all and there is an effective and constant build-up.

The search function

What makes a digital search function quite extraordinary, when compared to the pre-digital databases, can be summed up under three aspects.

The quantity of data is staggering. Numbers could be very high even in the predigital age: the estimate for a file system as the one for the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary is that it surpassed the one million threshold (Reiner 2002, p. 66-67; and see p. 79 for a foray into digitality). But a digital database is practically unlimited: a limit only means that new processing tools have to be found (as with “big data”).
Rapidity is another major factor. The result of a search is instant, no matter how large the database, and there is ni limit to the number of searches one can perform.
Finally, multiple search keys make the search highly sophisticated, since it can reduce the number of resulting entries considerably, and thus contribute to quality of the search.

The UGR

The UGR is structured so as to integrate data and argument, but it also provides the primary database to be used as input for personal use.

As an example, one may look at the ceramic inventory of 62,117 items from A15. The format I have adopted is plain ASCII, for durability, but the file can be imported into any spreadsheet program, such as Excel ². The codes at the top are explained in the Grammar and in the Ceramics digital book.

Notes

¹^ On a personal note, I would like to mention my use of Prof. Gelb’s personal set of 5*8 cards with references to textual occurrences relating to the Amorites, as indicated in the preface to the printed volume: “From the beginning he turned over to me his exhaustive collection of occurrences of the term MAR.TU in the Ur III period, a collection which has formed the basis of my research and to which I have added in only a small measure.” (Buccellati 1966 p. VII).

²^ This is a partial section of the database, to allow for a speedy download. The full database in Excel format is available here.