Something wonderful has happened over in Vienna. We all know of the Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum (CSEL) series of critical Latin texts of the fathers. This began back in 1866, and then seemed to dwindle in the 1950s, and was overtaken by other series. Collections of PDFs of the volumes have gone around the web for years.
Some years ago I was pleasantly surprised to learn of new activity there, and many new editions, although of course these were all inaccessible.
Now it seems that someone at the Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften (ÖAW) has had a brilliant idea. They’ve placed online at their site PDFs of all the volumes up to 2010 as open-access. All the volumes of the CSEL series are here. You click on the link, and it takes you to the page where you can buy a printed copy – some very inexpensive, which was a surprise! – and also the PDF, available free without any messing about.
Here for instance is a screen grab of the relevant part of the site for the very first volume, CSEL 1, from 1883:
The PDFs are all labelled “nicht barrierefrei” which Google renders as “not accessible”, which is strange. But if you click “add to cart”, it just saves the PDF.
The explanation is at the publisher website here (in German):
The Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, abbreviated CSEL, is a scholarly publication series that publishes critical editions of the works of Latin Christian writers of late antiquity. The series is published by the CSEL research unit at the University of Salzburg.
In 2013, as part of a comprehensive digitization project, 70 previously out-of-print CSEL volumes were reprinted and made accessible.
In 2023, the CSEL volumes that were previously available digitally were made open access , and this is to be extended to all volumes held by the publisher by the beginning of 2024.
Well!
This is actually a very intelligent decision, and done in a clever way. After all, if I needed to work on a text in a volume, and a reprint is only 20 euros, I think I’d buy a copy, even if I had a PDF. The fact that the purchase price dangles right there when you do the download may well cause a few impulse buys. After all, wouldn’t most of us like a shelf-full of CSEL volumes? They do look good on the shelf.
Likewise it indicates that the CSEL and the ÖAW have grasped that almost all scholars are collecting PDFs. Likewise lists of the series circulate online, with links attached. Given the expense of scholarly books, it is not likely that these collections of PDFs cost the publishers much. And aren’t these publishers all funded from tax money anyway?
This availability of material in PDF is why so much work gets done from some editions, and not from others. Indeed some scholarly work probably never happens purely because an interested scholar simply can’t access a volume without a struggle. I speak here from knowledge: my own intermittent urge to translate some of Eusebius of Emesa has been foiled by my inability to get hold of Buytaert’s edition without taking a day trip.
The way in which the ÖAW have done this makes instantly obsolete the lists of volumes available elsewhere online. In a sense, they have taken back control of their own series, and drawn traffic back to their own site. Likewise the existence of the good official PDF volumes will drive the others out of use. They will probably sell more books because of the website design. And… they will bring the CSEL series, and its current activity, right back into the forefront of the minds of patristics scholars.
It is truly very brilliant thinking. Somebody there is exceedingly clever. Everyone will benefit. Well done.