Latest Deinde bookmark 12/23/2009

• Herod's Buildings 3D photos

  4 very nice 3D interactive photos of Herod's architectural marvels- Caesara, the Herodium, Masada, and the Temple.

  tags: multimedia, virtual_tour

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Research in Biblical Studies, part 3: What's available and not being utilized

In this post I want to talk about some currently available resources and technologies that to my knowledge are not being utilized by current indexes in biblical studies.

DOI's: I've talked about the Digital Object Identifier before, and they are becoming increasingly familiar. A DOI is a unique number assigned to an article (or any digital object). So for instance, the most recent NTS article by Chris Keith entitled "The Claim of John 7.15 and the Memory of Jesus' Literacy" has been assigned a DOI by Cambridge, 10.1017/S0028688509990130. Now, you can either plug that DOI into Google and search for it, or you can place dx.doi.org/ in front of it, dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0028688509990130 It takes you directly to the page.

Many (but not all) of the journal publishers are utilizing DOI's, particularly publishers that host their own journals (Sage, Ingenta[Brill], Cambridge, etc). I would really like to see open source e-Journals like Journal of Hebrew Scriptures and TC assign DOI's to their articles. It would be nice to see ATLAS assign DOI's to the journal articles for which it is the exclusive host as well.

The DOI is a perfect example of how indexes can instantly connect researchers to content. I am unsure if any indexes currently utilize DOI's, my suspicion is that they do not.

Another, slightly more complicated, method that can be used for JSTOR articles involves coding- but it is also possible to provide direct links to articles in JSTOR using citation info.

Abstracts: While there are publications exclusively devoted to abstracting articles and essays, this has stayed outside the realm of indexes. Surprising to me is the fact that many journals now include abstracts for their articles, and these still don't seem to be utilized by indexes.

URL patterns for google books: Take a book off your shelf and put the ISBN directly after this URL: http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN

Here is my example: http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN9780802825018

(The same thing goes for journal ISSN numbers too)

A simple URL pattern created by Google Books for public use and it can be very easily utilized by indexes with some small code adjustments.

Book Reviews: This is more wishful thinking than anything, but wouldn't it be great if book reviews were attached right to a book's citation? Like perhaps RBL reviews would give an index permission to attach RBL reviews to a books citation in an index.

Google Scholar xRef: One of the most valuable things about Google Scholar, in my opinion, is the ability to find cross references of secondary literature. Take a journal article that you love, from a decade or so back. Here is one of mine. Dale Allison's "The Pauline Epistles And The Synoptic Gospels: The Pattern Of The Parallels". Take that title and throw it in to a google scholar search, WITH the quotation marks around, and you find 23 other books and articles which cite that work (or just click here). How great is that!

Again, a relatively simple matter of coding to enable a cross referencing feature in current indexes.

WorldCat links: Especially for the open source indexes, what about users who do not have institutional access, how will they know where to find a book or article? Or even for people with institutional access, wouldn't it be cool to show them with one click whether or not their local library has the book they want? Once again, with URL patterns, WorldCat can be utilized. Simply stick an ISBN after this URL pattern: http://www.worldcat.org/isbn/

For example, http://www.worldcat.org/isbn/9780802825018. An automatic link that, once personalized, instantly tells you the closest library that has the book. Again, a relatively simply coding implementation can yield a great feature for current indexes.

My fifith, and probably final, post will be a portrait of the ideal index in biblical studies.

Research in Biblical Studies, part 2: the good and the bad of where we're at

I tried to emphasize in the first post that we are blessed with all we have, and I actually mean it. Researching is faster than it has every been, with the ability to find all of the relevant secondary material much faster and being able to access it immediately available online.

However, we need to put a caveat on that last phrase. Before I go on to discuss some of the current systems, I want to talk a little bit about journals and publishers. In the humanities we need to come to grips with the fact that we're never going to have all journals be open access. Money just doesn't flow the same way it does into the hard sciences.

So while we have some journals freely available online, the majority of them which are available online are only available via subscription or by purchase. For most this means you need to be on campus to get at the articles, or perhaps use an Athens pass. It also means that, for the most part, after finding the relevant info, you need to go to your university library to find the database that has the article (or if it has it). I'll discuss this topic more in the next post(s).

So, now that I am getting to the point of being critical of current systems, keep in mind that I am and continue to be very grateful for the resources at my disposal.

1) The good and the bad of ATLA

The Good: ATLA is my first stop shop for finding secondary literature. It is a huge and excellent database that has 3 really good things going for it. First, it archives quite a few journals right there in its database, so getting the PDF is often one click away. Second, it has a scripture tagging system which is a really really great thing. When introducing ATLA to my students, that is always the first thing I tell them about. Third, university libraries use link resolver's to directly link citations to the library catalogues. Again, this allows for one click checking to see if your library has the item. This is an awesome feature of ATLA.

The Bad: I continue to use and love ATLA, but there are some limitations. First, the internet is so interconnected that it shouldn't take so many more steps to get from an ATLA citation to JSNT on SagePub (for instance). Another thing that bothers me is that EBSCOhost hosts both ATLA and NTabstracts and OTabstracts. The problem is that these databases aren't fused together— so after finding something in ATLA, I have to search for its abstract too.

But most importantly- it is not open access. People can only use it with an institutional subscription. For those of us with institutional access we don't notice- but many of us "institutionals" think that open access is an important thing. I hate the idea that graduated students or clergy can't use the resource that we teach them to use while in college or seminary.

2) The good and the bad of the abstract databases

The Good: I really value abstracts, as well as book reviews. Getting a snapshot of an article's contents is very valuable thing. Numerous journal articles now provide an abstract for the article as well as keywords, which is absolutely wonderful. I make heavy use of OT Abstracts, NT Abstracts, and occasionally Religious and Theological Abstracts as well.

The Bad: Once again, the problem comes down to one of access. All three abstract databases are only provided via an institutional or personal subscription. EBSCOhost hosts NT and OT abstracts, while Religious and Theological abstracts hosts its own database.

For me, abstracts is a big help in finding the relevant secondary literature for research. It stands to reason that wider availability of abstracts in an open source format would be beneficial for publishers.

3) The good and the bad of the open source indexes (BiBiL, BILDI, IxTheo, RAMBI)

The Good: The major GOOD of all of these is that they are open source for all to use. These are community driven- I think they are all maintained by particular university faculties. From what I can tell, BILDI is the largest of the collections, but it doesn't have the greatest software system and search capabilities. BiBiL shines as an excellent example of tagging citations, which includes Greek and Hebrew words. All of these pay more attention to non-English sources than ATLA does as well. Happily, these are great indexes for anyone to use. I make use of them regularly. ATLA is my first stop, but these ones are my next stop.

The Bad: I use and appreciate all of these databases, but there are limitations:

• None of these archive any articles the way ATLA does
• No links are provided to article databases. If you find the citation, it is still up to you to go off and find it
• No link is provided via link resolvers to local libraries
• None of these databases to my knowledge have abstracts

4) The good and the bad of 'article gateways' and other journals online (NOT including journals available by subscription)

The Good: The most obvious "good" to these resources is that articles are being made freely available online for anyone to use. In the case of a place like BiblicalStudies.org.uk, hard work has gone into full listings of TOC's as well as lists of citations on particular subjects. It is a wonderful resource. Awesome too are journals that are exclusively e-Journals like Journal of Hebrew Scriptures, or BBR (or Biblica) that has made its archive available online with mild embargos.

The Bad: You may wonder- what in the world can Danny possibly criticize about open access e-journals and journal archives being made open access for all the world to use? Again, I am very grateful for these, and will continue to use them.

The first problem is one of access. Unless you specifically know about the journals open access availability, you are not likely to find them because the place you find out about the article (in an index, or google scholar, etc) doesn't alert you to its presence on the web.

The second problem is closely related to availability- persistent linkage to these resources is a problem in an ever-evolving internet. Take BBR as an example. A link to Ellis, E. Earle, "Jesus' Use of the Old Testament and the Genesis of New Testament Theology," BBR 3 (1993) 59-75 is http://www.ibr-bbr.org/IBRBulletin/BBR_1993/BBR-1993_05_Ellis_JesusOT.pdf

All it would take is one small change in this url and the link would be broken forever. To my knowledge none of these e-journals nor journals archives uses persistent links (or better) for the articles themselves. They may use a PURL for the homepage, but that's it.

The same thing can be said of an article gateway like biblicalstudies.org.uk. The site is not a database, but rather a collection of html pages. It is not an ideal setup for bibliographic info. And should Bradshaw ever rearrange the pages or reorganize, links to articles would be broken.

I can even extend this criticism towards myself. On deinde here we host a massive list of google books in biblical studies, which is a collaborative effort with Bob Buller as the spearhead. But again, a list like this has limitations. It is not a database, but rather a simple page. We link to the book, which is good, but can't really be searched by keywords or categories, etc.

So What?

In the next post or two (haven't decided yet) I'd like to paint a sketch of some of the technologies that are already readily available to make the current databases better, as well as sketch what would be the ideal database for biblical studies. For those who have made it this far, you're troopers!

Latest Deinde bookmark 12/03/2009

• BILDI

  Bildi and Theolodi are probably the largest freely searchable databases on the internet, though the search capabilities are a little dated.

  tags: Bibliography_building

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Research in Biblical Studies, part 1: where we're at

When it comes to researching- finding the right articles, essays, and books- we've come a long way. Gone are the days of flipping through the card catalogues to find stuff. Libraries have awesome web catalogues that are integrated with the rest of the world via WorldCat. What's more, most disciplines have one or more indexes complete with keywords ad perhaps abstracts to help you find the right articles for your needs. The cream of the crop is undoubtedly in the hard sciences, particularly PubMed.

We in Biblical studies are blessed to have numerous indexes and other sites to assist us in finding the relevant material for our needs. In no particular order, here they are:

American Theological Library Association Serials (ATLA)

Biblical Bibliography of Lausanne (BiBiL)

Index Theologicus

Documentation for biblical literature Innsbruck (BILDI)

Index of Articles on Jewish Studies (RAMBI)

Many journals now supply abstracts with the articles. In addition, we have 3 suppliers of abstracts:

NT Abstracts

OT Abstracts

Religious and Theological Abstracts

In addition to that we have numerous sites that act like article gateways, collecting articles in biblical studies for open access. While there are a few of these site, the largest is undoubtedly Biblical Studies.org.uk.

In addition to that, we have numerous journals which are available freely online. Some, like Bulletin of Biblical Research, have a 3-year (or so) lag and then the articles are placed here. Others, like the Journal of Hebrew Scriptures, is purely an online journal and so obviously available and published solely online. A great list of journals in biblical studies, including which are online and which are not, is available both at Tyndale House and BILDI.

Beyond these there yet others- both Google Scholar and even deinde's own Journal Search have helped me find material that I didn't find elsewhere.

Going beyond articles, we now have some incredible access to books online. Google Book Search has become an indispensable resource for me personally. Archive.org is another storehouse. There are sites like Perseus, ETANA and Abzu, and book lists like the one on deinde that catalog thousands of great books available online.

I say it again, we are pretty blessed in Biblical Studies. There is lots out there and available online. Searching for and finding relevant secondary literature is faster than it has ever been, and more is immediately available to the researcher directly from the internet (articles and books, etc) than ever before.

Could it get any better? Well yes, I think it can. I'll tell you more in part 2 on some of the problems with the current state of affairs.