As all of us know, the RelTech house is working in an new project to scan and distribute via images the contents of the Patrologia Latina, at this time the first two ‘sample’ volumes are available in this address.

The great surprise is that this house is not working directly on the Migne edition, but the Garnier Fratres, this is the -almost- ‘second’ edition of this corpus, with all the issues this can have.

Tertullian’s frontispiece.

St. Ambroise’s frontispiece.

First of all, the content can be different to the first Migne’s editions, this means in all moment the user must have in mind this edition can be out the first align of the original editions of this work.

Second, i don’t know exactly the reach of this issue, but the database provided by the Chadwyck-Healey can have too some big differences with this last digitazion’s project.

The advantage i see is the price, and usability, keeping in mind the bad quality of almost all the volumes inside the Googlebooks project, this edition can be more useful and useful.

And, better of all, this project seems to be a better format for imprints, that only  the Gallica volumes reach, but inclusive the Gallica volumes several times have big troubles with the margins, cutting sadly the first or last letters, and leaving incomplete the whole text [Venerabilis Beda, I. PL. XC].

The site seems to be waiting to finish the last details of the digitazion and packing in dvd format, until the release day the total amount of this corpus will be available to customers in general.