Via Ancient World Online I learn of an initiative here to scan in the out-of-copyright volumes of the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum. This is very welcome news, so long as we get PDF’s out of the end of it.
It probably takes an initiative to do this. The CIL is really important, in that it contains all the Latin inscriptions. It also contains documentary texts.
But the volumes are huge, rare, and impossible to get access to. So no ordinary chap is ever going to be able to slap them on a photocopier and do the necessary. Indeed merely photocopying a page can be a challenge.
Let’s hope the volumes will be available in PDF. The site seems to make access to this complex, if it is possible; but that is what we want, first and foremost.