An email from Stephan Huller brings the following interesting information:
Did you know that all the old books in Greek public libraries – many dating to the sixteenth, seventeenth or eighteenth centuries – are available online at this address:
Just press the large orange banner and then type in the Greek name of any Church Father (or the name of Latin Fathers in regular fonts). It’s amazing what books are available there. I am not sure what is or isn’t available on archive.org but there’s tons of stuff here.
Hmm. I think you have to enter Greek text, but this sounds *very* interesting!
UPDATE: Stephan adds:
There are also handwritten copies of obscure manuscripts I didn’t know existed especially at the library of Zagoras. That library was part of a center of learning started by a rich Greek merchant named John Priggos who sent a thousand books from Amsterdam c 1762. The library has an interesting history
Oh thank you! I’ve been looking for a 19c Greek text which I couldn’t locate in digital collections at Greek universities (e.g. Anemi) or on archive.org but found it here! Trouble is the viewer is not working…I hope that’s just a temporary glitch. Grrr.
YPEPTH is the Greek Ministry of Education and Religious Affairs.
I haven’t got it to work yet. Does the search text have to be in Greek unicode letters, perhaps?
Works fine for me, searching in Greek unicode. Searching for e.g. “Ιωάννης ο Χρυσόστομος” or “Ιωαννης ο Χρυσοστομος” gives 149 results (searching for “Ἰωάννης ὁ Χρυσόστομος” gives zero so I have the feeling you’re better off just leaving off diacritics). Clicking the “single page” icon in the top right of an individual book’s view also gives a pdf of the whole book!
The viewer is weird. As long as you are viewing and using the system you can continue working forever. However once I leave and come back after a prolonged absence to the system it won’t let me go back to anything. I have to literally turn off my computer and start again! But it is incredibly useful, so it is worth it.
Thanks Ryan — will try it!