Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Ideas for the Bible Dictionary (from SBL) ::

This post is partly a note to myself, partly a hope that you will help me evaluate and work through a couple of ideas for the Bible Dictionary project that came out of sessions at SBL.

HBD and Bible Software

Someone suggested (sorry I never got a note of your name, if you read this please email me so I can note and remember you!) that we talk to Logos or BibleWorks about the possibility (once we have a first edition of articles) of putting the Dictionary into their software as well as making it available on the web. For the software company it would give them a good recent dictionary (currently they are all "aging", either old and out of copyright like ISBE, or elderly like The Anchor Bible Dictionary) that they could include even in basic packages. It would give us another funding source either for starting or (more likely) for running costs and development.

Semantic markup

As part of Sean Boisen's presentation for which he promises the slides soon, he showed us a cool implementation of his NT names data being used to sort and display names from the NT according to different categories. So, e.g. interested in Ephesus one could find out what other cities were in the same region, or which characters lived or visited the city (in the NT). I began to imagine making use of such a facility as part of the interface for the Dictionary...

Basically Sean's NT Names is (IT geeks please bare with my inaccuracies, ignorance and oversimplifications) a system of classifying names - of people and places so far - according to their relationships. So Timothy is an "associate of" Paul, but the "son of" Eunice, "lived in" Lystra, he "visited".... etc. A user who can navigate through this web of data while "inside" a Bible Dictionary has a whole load more options for exploring!

Labels: bible.dictionary, bible.software, sbl

¶ 8:29 AM

[to Del.icio.us]

Tim,

I don't know if you remember me or not. I conducted a couple of BibleWorks workshops back in April in Auckland.

I am now living in Hastings and would love to talk to you about/work with you on including this work in BibleWorks and on the web.

Joe Fleener
jfleener@digitalexegesis.com
Site - http://www.digitalexegesis.com
Blog - http://emethaletheia.blogspot.com/
BibleWorks Trainer - http://schedule.digitalexegesis.com/bibleworks.html

Director of Distance Learning/Library Director
The Shepherd's Bible College
PO BOX 8229 Havelock North New Zealand
Ph. +64 6 877-8013
Mob +64 021 998617
Fax +64 6 877-5821
www.tsbc.org.nz
http://library.tsbc.org.nz

Library and Information Services Coordinator
The Master's Academy International
24307 Magic Mountain Parkway #540
Valencia, CA 91355-3402
(661) 295-6232
www.tmainternational.org

By Anonymous, at November 22, 2006 10:20 AM