The '''''Index Thomisticus''''' was a [[digital humanities]] project that created a [[Concordance (publishing)|concordance]] to 179 texts centering around [[Thomas Aquinas]]. Led by [[Roberto Busa]], the project indexed 10,631,980 words over the course of 34 years.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Sprokel|first=Nico|date=1978|title=THE "INDEX THOMISTICUS"|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/23576117|journal=Gregorianum|volume=59|issue=4|pages=739–750|issn=0017-4114}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|last=Busa|first=R.|date=1980|title=The Annals of Humanities Computing: The Index Thomisticus|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/30207304|journal=Computers and the Humanities|volume=14|issue=2|pages=83–90|issn=0010-4817}}</ref>
== Project ==
Busa began the project in 19411946.<ref name=":0">{{Cite newsjournal|last=Busa|first=R.|date=2020-12-191980|title=HowThe dataAnnals analysisof canHumanities enrichComputing: theThe liberalIndex arts|work=The EconomistThomisticus|url=https://www.economistjstor.comorg/christmas-specialsstable/2020/12/19/how-data-analysis-can-enrich-30207304|journal=Computers and the-liberal-arts Humanities|access-datevolume=2020-12-2714|issue=2|pages=83–90|issn=00130010-06134817}}</ref> [[IBM]] agreed in 1949 to sponsor the project until its completion.{{Sfn|Burton|1984|pp=109–110}} They assigned Paul Tasman, an executive at the company, to work with Busa.<ref name=":1">{{Cite news|first=|date=1988-03-07|title=Paul Tasman, Executive, 74|language=en-US|work=The New York Times|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1988/03/07/obituaries/paul-tasman-executive-74.html|url-status=live|access-date=2020-12-27|issn=0362-4331}}</ref> Busa selected 179 texts centering around [[Thomas Aquinas]], including 118 of Aquinas's own works, to put into a form that was [[Machine-readable passport|machine-readable]]. The 61 items not by Aquinas were all either mis-attributed to him at one point or represented an attempt to complete an unfinished work begun by Aquinas.{{Sfn|Burton|1984|pp=109–110}} Between 1950 and 1966 the project [[Punched card|punched]] the texts. They worked in [[Gallarate]], Italy,<ref name=":2">{{Cite book|last=Gouws|first=Rufus|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5PfbBgAAQBAJ|title=Dictionaries. An International Encyclopedia of Lexicography: Supplementary Volume: Recent Developments with Focus on Electronic and Computational Lexicography|last2=Heid|first2=Ulrich|last3=Schweickard|first3=Wolfgang|last4=Wiegand|first4=Herbert Ernst|date=2013-12-18|publisher=Walter de Gruyter|year=|isbn=978-3-11-023813-6|location=|pages=972|language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|last=Sprokel|first=Nico|date=1978|title=THE "INDEX THOMISTICUS"|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/23576117|journal=Gregorianum|volume=59|issue=4|pages=739–750|issn=0017-4114}}</ref> and work peaked in size in 1962 with 70 workers.{{Sfn|Rockwell|Passarotti|2019|p=13}} After the punching was complete, the data was [[Lemmatisation|lemmatised]] in a semi-automatic process.<ref name=":2" />
The completed project indexed a total of 10,631,980 words in fifty-six volumes over 70,000 pages{{Em dash}}divided into ten volumes of indexes, followed by thirty-one [[Concordance (publishing)|concordances]] of Aquinas's works, eight of related authors, and seven volumes that reprinted the source texts.{{Sfn|Burton|1984|pp=109–110}}<ref name=":3">{{Cite journal|last=Guietti|first=Paolo|date=1993|title=Hermeneutic of Aquinas’s Texts: Notes on the Index Thomisticus|url=https://muse.jhu.edu/article/637590|journal=The Thomist: A Speculative Quarterly Review|language=en|volume=57|issue=4|pages=667–686|doi=10.1353/tho.1993.0006|issn=2473-3725}}</ref> The first volume was published in 1974,<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Hockey|first=Susan|date=2006-01-01|editor-last=Dawson|editor-first=Andy|editor2-last=Brown|editor2-first=David|title=The rendering of humanities information in a digital context: Current trends and future developments|url=https://doi.org/10.1108/00012530610648699|journal=Aslib Proceedings|volume=58|issue=1/2|pages=89–101|doi=10.1108/00012530610648699|issn=0001-253X}}</ref> and it was completed in 1980. The project used a total of {{Convert|1,500|km|mi|abbr=}} of wire<ref name=":0">{{Cite news|date=2020-12-19|title=How data analysis can enrich the liberal arts|work=The Economist|url=https://www.economist.com/christmas-specials/2020/12/19/how-data-analysis-can-enrich-the-liberal-arts|access-date=2020-12-27|issn=0013-0613}}</ref> and it took an estimated 10,000 hours of computer work and 1 million hours of human work.<ref name=":1" /> The seven completely reprinting the source texts were sold separately.{{Sfn|Burton|1984|pp=109–110}} The ''Index'' was released on [[CD-ROM]] in 1992 and a website was launched in 2005.<ref name=":0" />
