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!