Good news for classical scholarship is coming out of the Thesaurus today.
It involves open access to the Thesaurus linguae Latinae, the most comprehensive dictionary of ancient Latin.
The excellent TLL database produced by the publishing house De Gruyter has been available for a long time. As is well known, it provides a wealth of features to illustrate the “depth” of the Lemma entries fully, to easily follow cross-references, and to visualize and search through the passages in multiple ways. Access is subject to a fee, but many research institutions and libraries provide free access to their users.
Now, in consultation with the publisher and in cooperation with the IT department of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities, we are able to offer an open-access PDF version (organized by volumes and lemmata) of the previously published volumes A – M and O – P. Access is free of charge. Of course, this does not replace the platform offered by the publishing house, but it is a huge step towards greater accessibility around the world, independently of institutions. We sincerely hope that that the possibilities it offers will benefit future research. We ask for your help sharing this information with your colleagues and we welcome feedback of all kinds.
Access is now possible via our homepage: http://www.thesaurus.badw.de/en/tll-digital/tll-open-access.html.