My Multimedia Flashcards land on the iPhone....and more

My multimedia flashcard expansion packs continue to be helpful to students out there, and I'm really happy to announce that flashcards with audio are now available for iPhone and iPod Touch. To my knowledge these are the only iPhone flashcard sets available with audio.

Furthermore, I've also made the desktop version of my flashcard sets (audio AND image/mnemonics) available for Mental Case on the Mac.

In case you don't know, my flashcard sets are keyed to Mounce's grammar, Croy's grammar, Black's grammar, and Steven's grammar.

Check 'em out!

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!

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.

Part 4: the present and the future

This is my final retrospective post on where deinde has been, where it is, and where it is going.

The Present

I must first say that I'm very happy with the response of the new deinde site. I made the decision earlier this year that I needed to move away from Wordpress, I just didn't feel like learning how to mod a new platform, and I wanted more flexibility in handling the increasing amount of resources on the site. So I made the switch just a few weeks ago now, using the awesome Rapidweaver website creator. The traffic to deinde has increased significantly since I made the change (according to Google Analytics) which is a good sign too! About the only thing I regret (though it couldn't be helped) is that I had to change the blog feed yet again. As with any feed change, you are bound to lose a few readers who forget or don't bother to update their feed.

The biggest reason for the change out of all the resources were for the Bookmarks in Biblical Studies. You see, I've been keeping good tabs on the internet for a few years. Not only did I do this for my own benefit, but for my students and colleagues as well. And in the back of my mind I always wanted to make my own bookmarks gateway with a bit of a different approach. The problem, basically, is that I could never find the right platform- the available software or online options never matched the ideal in my mind. At first I thought it was going to be Delicious, then I thought it would be Ma.gnolia. In fact, there was a point when I really thought Ma.gnolia would be the right option. I talked to Mark Goodacre about this even being an option for NT Gateway. But during the course of discussion, which I think was helpful for all, Ma.Gnolia's limitation became obvious for me. Mark Goodacre, with the help of Logos, eventually revamped the NTGateway. As for me, I was still sitting on a great collection of bookmarks with descriptions and tags, etc. Enter Diigo. Diigo in my opinion is the best of the best when it comes to a social bookmarking system. I finally found a home for my bookmarks. But I wanted to present my links on deinde in an attractive way, based on tags. This was the big reason I went with the Rapidweaver site- and I'm very happy with the final product. Each link is tagged with one or more tags, has a brief description, and if I actually annotate the page, those are linked as well. Three other advantages to my Diigo system: 1) My diigo bookmarklet runs right in Safari, making the addition of a bookmark to my Diigo collection a snap. 2) Because of the setup, I NEVER need to alter the gateway site- Diigo just feeds the new bookmarks to the site. 3) Diigo creates a feed whenever I add a new bookmark which I crosspost both on this blog and on a bookmarks feed here. I have, I think, a very good yet simple system for me to manage, yet delivers a lot of features and power. About the only downside is that it takes a few extra seconds for the gateway page to load. But considering the fact that this is a ONE PAGE comprehensive gateway, the wait is worth it :-)

One final "present" item, and that is a new blog I call the Journal Alerts blog. I haven't had much time to work on this yet, but if/when I get the chance to work on it more I think its usefulness will increase. Basically, I'm tying together some abilities of Google Reader and blogger to try and aggregate any and all alerts for biblical studies journals. If it all works out, this would be the one stop shop for keeping current on new journal articles.

The Future

I've got some exciting things (at least for me!) in store for 2009. In addition to keeping the Bookmarks, Web Search, and Blog search up to date, and continuing my usual penetrating analysis and commentary on the deinde blog, I will be doing a big upgrade to my Greek multimedia flashcards, as well as unveil Hebrew multimedia flashcards. These would have been out in 2008, but once again I am having to wait for software to catch up with me :-) But here it is in a nutshell- I will be using Mental Case as the new Mac software option and continue with MemoryLifter for PC. The package will come with ALL Greek words from the NT- tagged by root, frequency, and textbook chapters. The Hebrew package will be similar, but may be a bit longer in coming. I'm looking forward to these! So some time in 2009 a "Hebrew" menu item will be making an appearance on deinde.

Beyond that? Well I have another big idea brewing- actually it has been germinating for many years at deinde. I have thought about and decided that I will indeed blog about it to see if I get any positive reaction. Perhaps it is unrealistic and that will help me put it to rest. So stay tuned for my discussion on a possible future open source index for biblical studies :-)

part 3: expansion of resources

Part 1- Deinde origins. Part 2- Morphs and Expansions.

Part 3 is about the expansion of resources on deinde. For some it may well be the first introduction to some of the stuff deinde has got. I think I've got the chronological order down but its easier to talk about them based on similarity of content.

Google Books list: After an SBL forum post I talked with Bob Buller from SBL and found out he had been making a grand collection. I suggested we collaborate via Google Docs and publish the continual work in progress.

Scripture Indexing Guide: I've payed my do's to the guild as a student and created a few indexes. I came up with a method to simplify the process (as much as possible) and made it available to everyone.

SBL abbreviations: I was surprised to find that there wasn't a good spreadsheet of text file on the next for SBL abbreviations, so decided to make my collection available (Stems from indexing work too :-)

Theological German Grammar: Heading in to my PhD I began the study of Theological German- and like most of us I came to find that there are not many grammars focused on theological German. One that was passed on to me by Lee McDonald was by Walter Bense and published in house at Harvard. I received permission to reproduce it online for anyone to use.

Theological German glossary: Yet another item that I originally made for myself in the study of Theological German. This glossary contains items more specific to Theological German, as well as the essential German words that need to be learned.

Multimedia Greek Flashcards: The following Greek resources have really stemmed from my teaching of NT Greek for the past 3 years. One of my projects was to create multimedia flashcard sets using existing vocabulary software for both Mac and PC. I sell these for a small price and they have been pretty well received (I'll talk about updates to these in the next post)

Flashcard Roundup: In an effort to help students and profs find vocabulary cards for computer, I created this roundup so you know where to find what you want.

Greek Animations: I can take zero credit for these. They were created by Glenn Wooden for use with Mounce's grammar, but can be used no matter what intro textbook you use. These small video files animate the Greek grammar for the students.

Greek Principal Parts: Many of these came to me via Craig Evans and I've added some since then. I plan to expand this dataset even more in the future. I think this is already the largest collection of Greek principal parts on the net, but I may be wrong :-)

Greek Songs: Some of my most popular posts ever were when I unveiled some of my Greek Songs (which I'm working on publishing). This page is the permanent home for them now.

In my last post (should be tomorrow) in this series on the history of Deinde, I want to talk about Bookmarks in Biblical Studies, as well as a few new feeds and some future projects coming down the pipeline.

Get the Code!

For those who may be interested in having a deinde search box on your site, I have placed the code on deinde to easily copy and paste to your site. I especially encourage anyone hosting biblical studies related sites to pop in a Deinde Web Search box on to your page- help your visitors/users/students search for and find quality resources on the internet without having to wade through the smut that regular googling gives you.

Grab the codes here.

part 2: Deinde's morphs and expansions

In part one I talked about the origins of good old deinde, in this brief section I want to talk about some of the expansions and morphing that took place in the past few years.

Rather than doing a chronological account, I'll attack it on two fronts. The first is platforms and people. As I mentioned, it started with Paul Nikkel on the blog, and I slowly started chiming in more and more. As we continued on with the original system it slowly became clear that the discussion boards weren't really taking off. At the same time, the web search for biblical studies was pretty popular. Paul and I decided to change to a different platform to allow for more contributors to the deinde blog. While we were on the new platform we had Mark Cheeseman throw in a few posts, as well as JB Hood (who I hope will come on board again some time!)— but by this time I had become the main blogger. The platform we chose, which encouraged community editing and posting, wasn't the greatest for hosting other resources, and so we changed platforms again to Wordpress. It was while we were on Wordpress that I started adding more and more additional resources. During the Wordpress time, do to the ebb and flow of life, Paul had less and less time to contribute and deinde essentially became a one man show— kind of like a pool shark that needs a backer (me being the pool shark and Paul being the backer :-)

Next, early resources. The first real resource we had was a search specifically for biblical studies. The next expansion came with the biblical studies glossary, which we created very early on. This 'quick and dirty' glossary continues to be our most visited page on deinde, and one that I continue to expand even today.

After our move to the second platform and the introduction of Google's custom search engines, I took over the Biblical studies search. This was a natural thing for me to do, as I had really started to keep good track on resources on the internet (more on this later). This led me to expand and create two more searches, the journals search and the biblioblogs search. I continue to be very proud of the Deinde Web Search, and it is used pretty frequently. (One of the first things I do for my students is introduce them to the Deinde web search). The biblioblogs search also continues to be popular as well.

The next resource page, my unicode for Mac tutorial, is another page that is visited frequently. This tutorial grew out of a series of posts I wrote on unicode implementation and reflects my well-known emphasis on technology in biblical studies.

That's long enough for now. I'll do two more posts after this: (3) expansion of resources, and (4) current status and future prospects.

The Markan copycat- Me! Deinde's relaunch and revitalization

Mark Goodacre has been a doing a great blog series on NTGateway's past, present, and future. The posts coincide with a presentation he is giving (or has already given) at SBL. I thought to myself, why not be a copycat? So this is first in a series of posts on Deinde. This first post is on ....

ROOTS
Although I'm traditionally known as the deinde guy now, those who have always followed us know that it was in fact Paul Nikkel who started the deinde website (go ahead and look back at the early days on archive.org's wayback machine). Deinde's lifeblood continues to rely on Paul Nikkel as he hosts deinde on his server. Deinde began as a site based primarily on php forums- Paul early on recognized the increasing value of community sites AND blogging. The original deinde also had its own web search (based on php digg) - the prototype of deinde's current web search.

When deinde began, it was Paul who did the majority of the blogging. I remember when Paul first asked me to consider helping out with deinde I almost said no- what a mistake that would have been! You see, although deinde is not the most prolific and frequently updated blogs, we are in fact one of the oldest- we're talking only a handful of biblical studies blogs when we first came on the scene. What I initially thought may be a detraction to my studies quickly gave me an outlet for research and discussion online and actually boosted my profile quite a bit- which was pretty cool! My first time going to SBL as a nervous student, people were recognizing my name and saying they read and enjoyed deinde! It felt great to be just a lowly student and actually feel like I was contributing to the guild. Publishers started occasionally sending me books, another indication that deinde was being read rather widely.

The next post will be on morphs and expansions, stay tuned!

Deinde Bookmarks- follow along!

I have created yet another blog feed for those who are interested in new bookmarks that I stumble across and add to the Bookmarks in Biblical Studies. When the bookmarks are noted in the feed, they are instantly added to the bookmarks gateway.

For those who follow the deinde blog already, new links found will be cross-posted, so you probably don't need to follow both. If you are interested in following along with these new findings, subscribe to this feed.