A Thesaurus of the Greek Language: Cataloging Dimitrakos's Historical Lexicon

Library catalogers often work with challenging materials, particularly foreign language. This article documents a cataloger’s research of the journey to publication of the Great Lexicon of the Entire Greek Language. It tells the history of the dictionary’s entries from Ancient to Koine to Byzantine to Demotic and to Katharevousa Greek. The article also includes a biographical sketch of its creator, Dimitrios V. Dimitrakos, a self-made publisher. It describes his sociopolitical struggles to produce this work and his commitment to education. The dictionary is a massive 15-volume scholarly work, covering over 200,000 entries in 8,056 pages. Awarded by the Academy of Athens in 1953, the lexicon offers definitions, etymologies, grammatical details, and literary references in the polytonic system. It was donated to Valdosta State University's Odum Library by Dr. Ari Santas.