Dittenberger-Vahlen Collection of Classical Texts Online

 [First posted in AWOL 26 November 2012, updated 2 December 2017]

Dittenberger-Vahlen Collection of Classical Texts
Illinois Harvest / Large-scale Digitization Initiative, University of Illinois

In 2000, the Classics Library at UIUC received a $85,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to microfilm its Dittenberger-Vahlen Collection of rare, priceless and perishable 19th century European dissertations and other short scholarly works on Latin and Greek literature, history and civilization. The grant was part of a $885,000 NEH grant to the Committee on Institutional Cooperation's (CIC) Center for Library Initiatives. The UIUC Library acquired the private collections of Wilhelm Dittenberger (1840-1906) and Johannes Vahlen (1830-1911) in 1907 and 1913, respectively. Dittenberger's collection consists of 5,600 books and 2,000 pamphlets; Vahlen's consists of 10,000 books and 15,000 pamphlets. Hundreds of the titles in this collection have now been digitized. The collection is a subset of the University of Illinois Digitized Books Collection.

Until recently this large collection of Universitätsschriften and other short scholarly works on Latin and Greek literature has been accessible only on not widely distributed microfilm. 2,886 items are now accessible in multiple formats with first rate bibliographic metadata.

Dittenberger-Vahlen Collection in Worldcat

The Classics Library of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is continuing to digitize books from it's collection, many but not all of which are also from its Dittenberger-Vahlen Collection. These digital scans were created by the library's Digital Content Creation department.  They will eventually appear in the Dittenberger-Vahlen Collection of Classical Texts, but in the meantime they are accessible at the Internet Archive.  To promote this project, they have created a Tumblr account that features the latest items to have been digitized and added to the Internet Archive:

U of Illinois Classics Library 
 

With thanks to Mark Wardecker, Acting Classics Librarian, University of Illinois at Urbana, and to Bruce Swann, former Classics Librarian, University of Illinois at Urbana, for making this collection available.

And see also Illinois Classical Studies