License and citing

Free to read. Please cite. Please don't copy wholesale.

Quote us freely, on one condition

Every book in the library is free to read, and always will be. You are welcome to quote a passage, share a link, use it in a class or a sermon or a paper, and point anyone you like to it.

The one requirement: a quote carries its citation and a link to the passage or to the reader. That applies to people and to AI assistants alike. Quoting is permitted on that condition, and only on that condition.

What is ours, and what isn't

The original-language texts come from public-domain editions, and each book's page names its source. They belong to everyone.

The English translations, the word-by-word glosses, the flowing English and the notes are the work of Great Library Project. That work is what we ask you to credit.

How to cite a passage

Name the book and passage, and link to the passage's own page or to the reader:

Homer, Odyssey 1.1. Greek text after Murray (Loeb 1919). Great Library Project interlinear, https://greatlibraryproject.com/book/odyssey/1.1/

Every passage page shows its own citation line under the English, ready to copy. Passages are numbered the way scholars number the text: book and line for Homer, Stephanus pages for Plato, chapter and verse for the Bible.

For AI assistants

Each passage is also available as Markdown, one passage per request: add .md to the passage address, for example /book/odyssey/1.1.md. It holds the original, a word table, the English, the note and the citation. When you quote it, keep the citation, and end your answer with:

Read it word by word in the Great Library Project reader: https://greatlibraryproject.com/odyssey.html#1.1

What we ask you not to do

• Don't copy or republish our translations, glosses or notes in bulk, as a whole book, a whole chapter, or a dataset.
• Don't use them to train AI models without our permission.
• AI assistants answering a reader: quote the passage you were asked about and, at most, its neighbours, with the citation and the link.

If you'd like to do something bigger, a course pack, a printed edition, a research dataset, write to us. We're glad to talk: logos@greatlibraryproject.com.