In recent years, research on Digital Classics (Hunt et al. 2017) and Digital Papyrology (Reggiani 2017; 2018; 2025) has experienced a consistent growth, and recent scholarship on digital humanities in papyrology (Vannini 2022a; 2022b) and linked data for ancient civilizations (Middle 2022) has shown much promise and highlighted the relevance of continued research on these dimensions. For the object type of ancient papyri, the aggregator platform Trismegistos (Depauw 2018) has been built and maintained as a massive collaborative endeavor, but while it is currently a dominant online presence for ancient written texts, much of its potential remains untapped. As a portal for texts on a variety of ancient materials, as well as a connecting point between institutional holdings and projects working with them, Trismegistos provides stable identifiers for its various categories, incl. Texts, Places, and Names. Based on its section “Trismegistos (TM) Collections” and its persistent identifiers (TM Coll IDs) for (often institutional) holdings, the updated and expanded dataset presented here consists of a global directory containing 800 papyrus-holding TM Collections, and features additional facets and information on the state and types of digitization, including the availability of papyrus images, use of IIIF, and the application of open licenses to both images and metadata.

Papyri are a prime example of highly mobile heritage objects, having been distributed worldwide through avenues we continue to uncover to this day. They have made their way to unlikely locations, both private and public, changing hands regularly, and impeding research into their origin, movements, and current state. The availability of high-quality digitizations of papyri, including both images and metadata, has therefore never been both more needed and more easily provided. Understanding the current state of papyrus collections worldwide and their digitization allows institutions and researchers to better anticipate, plan and collaborate for the future. Community-supported platforms like Trismegistos already contribute much to the ways in which ancient textual evidence can be accessed and identified, which makes them an excellent starting point for researchers of many disciplines delving into projects requiring the support of papyrological evidence.

This dataset incorporates elements of Open GLAM (galleries, libraries, archives, museums), the institution types which typically act as custodians of papyrus collections both large and small. Private collections are an additional category that can be difficult to grasp and quantify, with owners ranging from active scholars to anonymous bidders. Overall, this landscape contributes to a diversity of imaging and metadata standards, and attempts at interoperability, presentation modes and accessibility of collections can differ vastly. With an updated understanding of papyrus locations worldwide and what papyrological caretaking entails in the 21st century, the following aspects incorporated in the dataset according to the FAIR principles (Wilkinson 2016) shine a light on points of improvement and collaboration for custodians preparing to make papyri available digitally: Findability (e.g., persistent identifiers), Accessibility (e.g., online collections), Interoperability (e.g., metadata standards, cross-linking), and Reusability (e.g., open licensing).

The dimensions presented in this poster further include references to aggregators in the cultural heritage sector (incl. Wikipedia, Wikidata, Europeana), encouraging interoperability and collaboration between major platforms for object types across scholarly disciplines. For a more connected and cohesive digital papyrology, the dataset can be used to compare and contrast selected avenues of digitization and digital caretaking, supporting institutional decision-making and even potential funding applications, as well as informing researchers about current locations of papyrological holdings. The dataset is intended to grow further in the future, incorporating increasing detail and regular updates from papyrus-holding institutions as they continue to or freshly tackle the digitization of their collections.