Psalty

Psalty is a multidisciplinary digital humanities project and data platform focused on the Book of Psalms. It collects, curates, and analyzes textual, linguistic, and musical material drawn from Hebrew, Greek, and Latin psalm corpora, with the aim of supporting scholarly study and public access to primary sources. The platform emphasizes intertextual connections, manuscript variation, and the relationship between text and chant.

History and development

The project was initiated by a consortium of universities and research institutes in the mid-2010s. An initial release provided a searchable corpus of psalms with encoded texts and basic musical representations. Over subsequent years, Psalty expanded to include additional language witnesses, improved critical apparatus, and more robust data interoperability. In 2020s, it adopted open licenses and API access to encourage external contributions and reproducible research.

Data model and tools

Psalty uses a layered data model that combines TEI-encoded textual witnesses with MEI-based musical notation for psalm tones and chant fragments. An interlinked graph captures manuscript relationships, philological notes, and linguistic annotations such as lemmas and glosses. The platform offers tools for textual comparison, phonological tagging, and visualization of verse structure alongside musical contours. Researchers can export data in standard formats and access it via a REST API or SPARQL endpoint.

Access and use

Psalty is publicly accessible under an open license. It supports advanced search across languages and witnesses, programmatic data retrieval, and integration with other digital humanities tools. The project emphasizes reproducibility and community curation, inviting scholars to contribute new witnesses, annotations, and musical encodings.

Impact and reception

Psalty is used in biblical studies, liturgical research, and digital humanities pedagogy. It serves as a model for integrating textual criticism with musical notation and cross-linguistic data in a single, interoperable resource.

See also

Psalter, Book of Psalms, TEI, MEI, digital humanities.