The Thesaurus Linguae Graecae® or "Treasury of the Greek Language" was conceived and initially funded by Marianne McDonald. In 1972 Marianne McDonald, then a graduate student in Classics at the University of California, Irvine and now a Professor of Theatre and Classics at UC San Diego, proposed the creation of a computerized databank of Greek Literature. The concept was extraordinary since no one, until then, had considered the marriage of Classical scholarship with the rapidly emerging new technologies.

Theodore F. Brunner was the Project's founding Director and remained in his position until 1997 when he retired from the University. Maria C. Pantelia has been the Project Director since February 1998.

The challenge of this huge undertaking was originally met with the help of several classicists and technology experts but primarily thanks to the efforts of David W. Packard and his team who created the Ibycus system, namely the hardware and software originally used to correct and search the TLG corpus. A desktop version of Ibycus was also developed by David W. Packard in 1985 and used to search the TLG CD ROM. Ibycus served the Project well until 1999 when it was replaced by a new correction and verification system designed and developed by the TLG team. Soon afterwards, the complete corpus was made available online.

David W. Packard is also the author of alpha-and later beta code, a character and formatting encoding convention. Beta code assigns an ASCII position to each of the twenty-four Greek letters. Diacritics are indicated by non-alphabetic characters following the accented vowel. Beta-code remains to this day the most practical way to encode polytonic Greek data.

The completion of the Greek Unicode Polytonic set has already improved input and web display of Polytonic Greek and may eventually replace beta. From 2003-2004, the TLG undertook the task of putting together a series of proposals to encode into Unicode, all the characters needed for the proper representation of Greek texts.

Over thirty four years later, the Thesaurus of the Greek Language is a reality. The TLG® Digital Library now contains virtually all Greek texts surviving from the period between Homer (8th century B.C.) and A.D. 600 and the majority of surviving works up the fall of Byzantium in A.D. 1453. The center continues its efforts to include all extant Greek texts from the byzantine and post-byzantine period. The TLG corpus is available in more than 2,000 universities and research centers around the world and used by thousands of specialists and non-experts. TLG® users include researchers, educators and students from a wide range of disciplines such as classics, archaeology, history, art, history, philosophy, linguistics, and theology/religious studies.

The Project released its last CD ROM version (disk E) in February 2000. TLG® materials are now available online to individuals and institutions with a site license. The Online TLG is updated quarterly to include new additions to the corpus.

An Abridged/Trial version has been created so that non-subscribers can try out the TLG® online. The trial version contains a representative selection of texts. The complete Canon of Greek Authors and Works is also available online and open to the public.

Extensive financial support for the project has been provided by Marianne McDonald. Additional funding has been made available by numerous individuals and entities such as the National Endowment for the Humanities, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Costas and Mary Maliotis Charitable Trust, the Annunciation Endowment Fund, and the University of California, Irvine.

The TLG® is administered by a Director, who reports to UCI's Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Studies. Professor Maria Pantelia has been the TLG Director since February 1998.

The Online TLG® runs a search engine developed and maintained by the TLG®.

The TLG compact disk contains only texts in beta code (with attendant ID tables enabling efficient browsing of text), a word index of the texts, files containing bibliographical information (Canon) and Canon indices. To browse or search the TLG CD ROM data users need to obtain additional software. A number of software packages (developed for a variety of computer platforms) is available from several independent vendors. The Project has no plans to release an update to its CD ROM and is no longer investing resources in CD ROM technology.

In addition to its extensive collection of texts, the TLG® has compiled the Canon of Greek Authors and Works, a comprehensive database of all known ancient Greek and Byzantine authors, together with bibliographies of existing critical editions of their extant works. The Canon has been included in all TLG CD ROMs and can be searched online. It is also available in print:
Luci Berkowitz and Karl A. Squitier, Thesaurus Linguae Graecae Canon of Greek Authors and Works, third edition (Oxford University Press, 1990). A copy of the printed Canon can be ordered from:

Oxford University Press
2001 Evans Road
Cary, NC 27513

The Marianne Eirene McDonald Library (non-circulating) located on the TLG premises maintains extensive primary and secondary holdings in Greek language and literature.

Shari Nakata and Sarah Wallbank, former UCI graduate students in the Library.

The Online TLG can be accessed at any computer terminal at the UCI campus. The Project also maintains facilities for use by visitors wishing to utilize the TLG® collection and other resources on the premises. In-house access to TLG facilities and resources is provided free of charge. Individuals wishing to work with the TLG's resources in loco should make prior arrangements with the project.