Source : L'Année philologique.
The Année
Philologique, a critical and analytical bibliography of Greco-Latin Antiquity,
has existed since the 1920s: over the years, its generalist orientation has
made it a working tool that is useful for all, whatever one's specialty may be.
Since its creation and its dissemination on paper, it has been a
bibliographical tool that is universally recognized, utilized, and appreciated
by students of Antiquity throughout the world. Since 2002, its dissemination
online has facilitated the access of an ever-broader public to the
bibliographical data it offers.
However,
this irreplaceable tool is threatened, in the very near future, with
disappearing in its current form, and perhaps with simply ceasing publication.
The cause
of this threat is simple: the German office of the Année Philologique, the
Zweigstelle Heidelberg, must close its doors at the end of the fiscal year
2012, unless a durable source of funding is found. The Heidelberger Akademie
der Wissenschaften, which has funded it until now, has let it be known that it
will cut off all subsidies at that date. In so doing, it is applying the
government's decision to no longer fund continuing projects and positions, but
to henceforth grant funds only to short-term scientific operations, answering
to invitations to tender. If it were to take effect at the planned date, this
programmed closure would have disastrous consequences for the entire project :
with it, the totality of German-language research, whose importance for the
classical humanities is known to all, would cease to be covered by our
publication. Quantitatively, this would mean a decrease of approximately 30% of
the bibliographical items made available to the public.
Unless a
solution is found, the consequences will boil down to a sinister alternative:
the transformation of a project of high scientific value into a
bargain-basement search engine, or the outright disappearance of the
publication.
We the
undersigned express our indignation in the face of this blow against classical
bibliography and, more generally, against the whole of humanist studies. We
solemnly request the appropriate German academic and political authorities to
find the means necessary for the preservation of this working instrument of
undisputed scientific value.