In the early-70s the Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, led by Lloyd A. Kasten and John J. Nitti, then professors of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, began using computers as an important tool for the compilation of dictionaries and the analysis of texts. Their main project, the Dictionary of the Old Spanish Language (DOSL), that had rejected the use of editions of medieval texts as the source material, demanded that the primary sources were as free from editorial bias as possible, and making thus necessary the creation of a data bank with the machine-readable transcriptions of all the texts that could eventually be incorporated into the dictionary.

In 1978 the HSMS published on microfiche The Concordances and Texts of the Royal Scriptorium Manuscripts of Alfonso X, the first of the Texts and Concordances series which, throughout the years, has added to the DOSL archives a large number of additional texts-close to 500 at last count. Almost two decades later, in 1997, the Texts and Concordances began to be published in CD-ROM, and although the new physical support allowed for easier access to the transcriptions—dedicated microfiche readers were no longer needed-the texts and concordances were still non—interactive flat files that didn't allow scholars to take full advantage of their possibilities.

Finally, in 2005, the HSMS began exploring the possibility of offering all of its textual archives in an on-line format that, while preserving the original structure, allowed for a truly interactive access to the texts, indexes and concordances. The result of all this, is the Digital Library of Old Spanish Texts, launched in 2011 with the publication of the Prose Works of Alfonso X el Sabio.

The Digital Library of Old Spanish Texts of the Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies is a free electronic resource with the following usage conditions:

• Users will cite the Digital Library of Old Spanish Texts in all of the research that uses its data. The citation format should follow this model (or a similar one that includes the same bibliographical information): Gago Jover, Francisco (ed). 2011. “Title of text”. Corpus Name. Digital Library of Old Spanish Texts. Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies. On line at http://www.hispanicseminary.org/complete url. [date of search]

• Users are kindly asked to inform the editors of any relevant research finding derived from consultation of the Digital Library of Old Spanish Texts. Finally, in order to improve the Digital Library of Old Spanish Texts, users are asked to let the editors know about any transcription or program errors.

Correct viewing of the Digital Library of Old Spanish Texts requires a browser that supports HTML 3.2 or higher, and a screen resolution of 800x600 or higher. The texts and concordances have been successfully tested on Internet Explorer 8.0, Internet Explorer 9.0, Mozilla Firefox 3.6, Google Chrome 8.0, Opera 10, and Safari 5.

Please be aware that the texts, concordances, and indexes files are very large. It may take your browser up to a minute to load all the required files.

The reading of the User's Guide is recommended prior to searching in the Digital Library of Old Spanish Texts.

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