The Library of Latin Texts is a subscription-based database of Latin texts, from antiquity up to the present day. Started in 1991 as the Cetedoc Library of Christian Latin Texts, it continues to be developed by the Centre ‘Traditio Litterarum Occidentalium’ and is hosted by Brepols Publishers.
History
In 1991, development of the Cetedoc Library of Christian Latin Texts started, with the aim of encompassing the entirety of Christian Latin literature. This digital database, initially released as a CD-ROM, was produced by the Cetedoc, led by prof. Paul Tombeur at the Université catholique de Louvain. Since 2001, the activities of Cetedoc have been continued in Turnhout, Belgium by the Centre ‘Traditio Litterarum Occidentalium’, still led by Paul Tombeur. In 2002, it was decided to expand the database's chronological scope beyond medieval and patristic times, its name was changed to Library of Latin Texts. In 2009, a B series was added to the original LLT. The LLT-B's scope was to accelerate the growth of the database by directly adopting the text of existing editions, without the intensive research work that is applied to the texts of the LLT-A. This work includes verifying facts related to the text and correcting errors in the printed edition.
Unlike similar initiatives, like Corpus Corporum and The Latin Library, the LLT is not an open-access database. This allows for the adoption of copyrighted editions. In fact, while open-access initiatives have to rely on out-of-copyright, possibly outdated editions, the LLT's policy is to select texts that have "been edited according to best contemporary scholarly practice". The texts edited in Brepols' Corpus Christianorumseries form the core of the LLT, even though numerically, they are outnumbered by texts edited in other publishers' series and, if no modern edition is available, by out-of-copyright editions. Nevertheless, for scholarly purposes, the LLT should be used in conjunction with the printed editions, as the critical apparatus is not included in the database.
