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.