Sansblogue

TaDa a codex! (Photo by Friar's Balsam)

The Center for History and New Media, George Mason University the people who brought us Zotero, the neat simple free “just does what it should” bibliography manager have held a One Week | One Tool project funded by the (US) National Endowment for the Humanities. The tool they produced (only 0.3 alpha as yet to be fair) they call Anthologize.

Anthologize is a free, open-source, plugin that transforms WordPress 3.0 into a platform for publishing electronic texts. Grab posts from your WordPress blog, import feeds from external sites, or create new content directly within Anthologize. Then outline, order, and edit your work, crafting it into a single volume for export in several formats, including—in this release—PDF, ePUB, TEI.

I wonder if we could use it with some other WordPress plugins to make making FOSOTT easier? And what about collaborating on and publishing the output of a colloquium? Like the Isaiah and Empire one?

The only trouble is, to get full brownie points in the academic system we may need to use a conventional respected print publisher, and I doubt any of them will be happy with opting into such a system :( How come systems (like the NZ “Performance Based Research Funding” exercise or US tenure committees) end up stifling innovative ways of undertaking basic scholarly tasks like publishing the results of research? Still FOSOTT wouldn’t count for such purposes anyway – it is merely teaching!

HT: Digital Campus

James has added a strong plea (to the mix of posts on the idea of a Free Open Source Old Testament Textbook) that any project not be limited to mere textyness. While, naturally, I agree (after all the Amos: Hypertext Bible Commentary was at least in part a partial intro textbook in (early) hypertext form, I would also like to see a core to the project that can produce a texty text book, for such a limited text is convenient for both teachers and students in a class setting.

So I’d see James’ plea as adding weight, and perhaps the possibility of dedicated new material, to Marks addendum to the Textbook idea.¹Mark explains this well with an example in another fine post The “Textyness” of the Textbook in a Digital Age:

Let’s say you are talking about the topic of form-criticism and introducing Richard Bauckham’s recent contributions about the involvement of alleged eye-witnesses.  You could record your own audio or video about this, in which you attempt to summarize his position, or you could watch and listen to the man himself doing it for you.  Examples of this kind could be multiplied.  My point is not that we should stop producing new resources — of course not.  But rather that we should start thinking seriously about the integration of good existing resources into our new model.

On the other hand, Mark’s latest post The Shortcomings of Traditional Textbooks in the Digital Age, and Our Invitation gives a clear vision of how such an Open Textbook with its associated richer collection might be significantly different from and better then merely another (but free) textbook:

The traditional textbook’s difficulty is that however strong its author, it is still that author’s views that are presented, in all their particularity.  What the textbook of the digital age can produce is something that is genuinely multi-authored as well as multi-media, a resource that encourages the university student to think critically from the earliest point by listening to different voices speaking on the same subjects.

1. See Neopublishing, FOSOTT and gateway sites formy take on why these are different but hopefully related projects. [↩]

Isn’t it exciting that at last there might be movement in the direction of a really simple and significant piece of what AKMA neatly neologises as “neopublishing“! By now you know that it all started with a twit that was published on Brooke’s Facebook page (see his blog Anumma for the belated expression of this in public “Open Access Intro to OT“) that happily was seen by AKMA. And that Mark offered (in The Future for Textbooks Online) his own slant on AKMA’s take on Brooke’s ideas. Doesn’t this sound like the resume of an episode of one of those teenage soaps one’s daughters watch?

In the latest round of posts, AKMA (Funding Neopublishing) highlights some really interesting ideas for funding such a project, and since this is a high demand, low(ish) cost project the idea of (almost) crowdsourcing the funding ought to be possible :) While Mark, always the gentleman and peacemaker, seeks to convince (himself and?) us that AKMA’s multiauthor multiple possibility neotextbook is really much the same sort of teaching tool as his own proposal for a gateway site focused on the needs of beginning students and intro classes. They aren’t, but both would serve really useful purposes. FOSOTT as a textbook would allow consistency of design, format and presentation making the assimilation of the basics of the discipline easier for beginners. An Intro Gateway as a collection of links to quality (somewhat?) assured resources selected for usefulness to beginners would be great for the further reading that we hope all students will do, and that the smart ones actually do do.

Incidentally, to display my own peacemaker tendencies, I think both Mark and Bob (in his comments to Mark’s most recent post) have it right: Mark point that there are now (on at least most topics) far more quality resources and enough to make a workable “further reading” list for an intro class is correct. Bob is also right though that Google works better as a search engine, and so can offer more complete coverage than even the NT Gateway or iTanakh can manage (just note the cost though for an intro class, teachers must spend more time educating students to be critical).¹

1. Yes, we say that this is what we do, but really we sometimes resent the time spent explaining how they should have known that the latest Indiana Jones stunt is not worth the price of the salesman/archaeologist?’s hat, since that time would have been much better spent downloading more of our precious learning into their poor feeble brains. [↩]

Brooke has now posted his own take on the project Open Access Intro to OT so perhaps I’ll have to start using OAIOT ;)

From AKMA and Mark I learned that Brooke Lester had asked his Facebook friends, “I know the answer before I ask, but: Do we have no good, critical, open-access Intro to Old Testament textbooks?”

I have no idea what Brooke said, because this conversation is not on Anuma, and I’m not in the favoured few friended on Facebook. But both Mark and AKMA’s replies are brilliant, and brilliantly different. I read AKMA’s first, and he outlines exactly how such a project, that he calls FOSOTT Free Open Source Old Testament Textbook project would work. Basically with different people contributing chapters, and eventually a collection of variant chapters offering different perspectives and approaches to choose from and build your own textbook. As AKMA points out most of the infrastructure is ready and print on demand would make paper copies easily obtainable. I also love AKMA’s suggestion of podcast editions, short video intros and other optional extras. I’d add three details that I did not notice in AKMA’s presentation (which you must read!) some form of peer review or selection of authors¹ so that the quality is not compromised and an archive of earlier editions so that versions are stable and therefore citable² Thirdly I’d like to see strong guidelines for authors so that there is a measure of consistency in the topics treated and headings used, because such a straitjacket though a crimp on authors’ creativity would make life easier for poor beginning students ;)

Mark’s suggestion is a beefed up and focused version of his NT Gateway (or perhaps more precisely of Chris Heard’s iTanakh) such a site, collaboratively curated, that pointed students to suitable selected material already available on the web would also be brilliant.It has the advantage of avoiding the need for yet more spiffy wheel designs, but the disadvantages of lack of consistency and difficult printability.

I can envisage using both in different ways. FOSOTT as a textbook, that students are required to read selected chapters from week by week, they can choose whether to read online or buy a print copy, and the beginner focused Gateway site as a suggested further reading resource.

I therefore volunteer to write a chapter for FOSOTT, I can start writing at the end of next year (2011) when my current writing projects end, and if FOSOTT gets underway would prioritise it over another “volume” of HBC or other projects.

1. Notice that here I strongly disagree with a commenter who suggested starting the textbook as a Wiki – not because I don’t like Wikipedia, I love it, but because there is so much crud “biblical” material around and I want a resource I can use to help my students see what “good” looks like! [↩]
2. As a teacher I need this so that I can check students bizarre quotations in their essays. [↩]

Photo by iandeth

Link now working, sorry :(

I am still gradually expanding the open book Not Only a Father. I have added a section concerning “The Gender of Yahweh” to chapter five which (as a whole) is about “Theology of God as both Father and Mother“.

This growing book is an experiment in publishing as discussion, not merely a blog, but a coherent book-length exploration of a topic, but not merely a book online, since each thought and idea can be questioned, commented, challenged or expanded by the readers. The trouble is that unless it gets people visiting the material it does not get discussed, and unless YOU, or others like you who find the topic of using motherly language and pictures interesting, link to the material no one will find it, and the experiment will fail :(

Jean-Philippe Rouchon - Chef d'orchestre by Augustin Rouchon

For the article I am writing I am looking closely at various proposals for understanding the structure of the book of Amos. Once again I am struck by the variety of positions scholars can take. The issue of course is the evidence we use to convince each other. We weigh that evidence differently.

For example Klaus Koch and colleagues grew to scholarly maturity in a world dominated by Form Criticism, they place great emphasis on the use of introductory formulae, and on changes of genre. So the phrase “Hear this…”

• 3:1 שמעו  את־הדבר  הזה
• 4:1 שמעו  הדבר  הזה
• 5:1 שמעו  את־הדבר  הזה

They believed, as the process which produced the chapter divisions also believed, that these three introductions represented three blocks of material. (But note already some selection has gone on, similar phrases that lack the “this” do not mark sections in the same way:

• 3:13 שמעו (also starts a sentence and a speech unit)

However the example in:

• 8:4 שמעו־זאת

seems to start a unit, and includes “this”… Other information has come into play. There are similar issues, but perhaps even more ones that require judgment of an aesthetic kind when one looks at the “woe oracles”.

See: Klaus Koch, Amos: untersucht mit den Methoden einer strukturalen Formgeschichte, Alter Orient und Altes Testament 30 (Kevelaer: Butzon und Bercker, 1976)

Similarly a number of other scholars have proposed chiastic structures for all or part(s) of the book. These chiasms are sometimes similar to each other, though with interesting differences, but often they use different cues, and arrive at different results. Some rest mainly on verbal repetitions, others put more weight on repetition of themes, or content (like “a judgement against Israel”). In evaluating these we again rely on a sort of aesthetic sense, scholar X’s chaism convinces because it provides a “reading” of the passage, or the book, that “feels right”.

See: Jan de Waard, “The Chiastic Structure of Amos V 1-17,” Vetus Testamentum 27, no. 2 (1977): 170-177; a similar idea was proposed independently by Claude Coulot, Propositions pour une structuration du livre d’Amos au niveau rédactionnel Revue des sciences religieuses, extrait (tome 51, n°2-3, 1977) ([s.l.]: Revue Religieuse, 1977); J Lust, “Remarks on the Redaction of Amos V 4-6, 14-15,” Old Testament Studies 21 (1981): 129-54; N.J. Tromp, “Amos V 1-17: Towards a Stylistic and Rhetorical Analysis,” Oud-testamentliche Studien XXIII (1984): 56-84. Who all examined chiastic structures in 5:1-17, but compare Widbin, R Bryan. “Center Structure in the Center Oracles of Amos.” In Go to the land I will show you, edited by Joseph E. Coleson, Victor Harold Matthews, and Dwight W. Young, 177-192. Eisenbrauns, 1996. Or compare David A. Dorsey. “Literary Architecture and Aural Structuring Techniques in Amos.” Biblica 73 (1992): 305-30 with  de Waard, Jan, and William A.S. Smalley. In A translator’s handbook on the book of Amos. Stuttgart: United Bible Societies, 1979 on the book as a whole.

To be sure, both the form and the chiastic scholars attempt to support their arguments with scientific-sounding arguments, but in the end it is an aesthetic judgment which schemes are found convincing. The standard processes of scientific scholarship (like “blind” peer review) perhaps work well in the sciences and social-sciences, but do they work for more “artistic” fields? Could we rely on two other conductors to judge the worth of a third conductor’s reading of a particular piece? If we did musical performance would become much more tradition-bound and less exciting!

In the end we judge such performances by a complex process that includes the views of professional colleagues, critics and the general concert-going or CD-buying public. Perhaps such a process is also at work long term in biblical studies? But in the short-term, we play the peer review game, and perhaps also try to game the system to get our readings heard ;)

See: Paul Nikkel on Deinde “Trying to stay open-minded” and “An Open Return” the link to the DOC file that contained his ideas on open review in more detail seems to have been lost in the restructuring of the site.

The latest Tyndale Tech email just arrived. I do not usually repeat them here, I reckon if you are interested you subscribe! But this one has a much wider than usual potential readership. In it David Instone-Brewer of Tyndale House, Cambridge presents a pretty full list of the remarkable range of online or freely downloadable Bible study tools, and also highlights briefly the main ones to buy as well.

If you study the Bible, at any level at all from beginner to PhD there is likely to be something here for you that you did not know about! The range of superb online tools has grown so fast over the last few years, that it is now amazing what is available.

Rotten Apple by brankomaster

Apple products are so “cool”, and so effectively advertised by “word of mouth” as well as in traditional media, what’s not to like?

Briefly because Apple products use proprietrary formats and are in other ways restrictive producing narrow and enclosed world.

• Proprietrary: Apple is the most tight assed computer and IT company around. Whether its hardware, software or services once you sell your soul to Apple you are restricted to the narrow and enclose universe of Apple. PCs can run, write and generally process most Apple-compatible file formats, the reverse is not true. It is for example always the Maccies who complain that a video format is “not supported” on their platform. I don’t get complaints from PC or Linux users if I post an Apple compatible format file. Apple takes what is worst about Microsoft, and magnifies it. Except Windows. They did choose to modify a decent OS in UNIX, gotta give them that ;)


Image from Boingboing post

• Restrictive: as well as tying you to the Apple brand for your hardware, Apple’s whole approach is to tie everything possible down. DRM gone mad, and iTunes which came up with the admittedly cool and neat idea of iTunes U, but then makes it only “accessible in the USA and Canada”. Use an Apple product, but use irt Apple’s way and with Apple peripherals, or bad luch you naughty person you are “out”!

Because that’s the shadow side of “cool”, the ins and outs, the haves and have-nots, you can’t have one without the other. Apple is the dark side of computing. PCs are the past, and for me at least Linux is what I’m gradually edging towards.

This rant was provoked by an attempt at useful procrastination, I thought I’d investigate iTunesU with a view to suggesting Carey develop an iTunes strategy. I can’t, we can’t, >95% of the world can’t. Only those in the USA and Canada are properly members of the Appleverse.

Cover of Richmal Crompton's More William

I did say this was audio week round here, didn’t I? Well the Richmal Crompton  project More William that Barbara and I collaborated to read has appeared. It had a somewhat checkered history, a victim of house sales and buying, and B’s new job in Tauranga, but over Easter we finished the reading and now it’s all available.

More William by Richmal Crompton (free audio book) also at Archive.org

“It was on Christmas Day that the centipede appeared on Aunt Evangeline’s plate, the library clock was found mysteriously dismantled, and the conjuring trick with the egg went disastrously wrong. But as William’s Aunt Lucy told him, A Busy Day is a Happy Day – and William is always eager to please adults.
The terror of the Brown family is back, leaving a trail of havoc behind him – with the very best of intentions.” (More William book jacket)

Lovers of British family sitcoms are either already William fans, or are likely to become avid followers of the dogged and imaginative child and his not always patient family.

Richmal Crompton’s William series of books tells the relationship between adults and children from a child’s perspective hilariously highlighting the different viewpoints. Most of us have been William (e.g. children who cannot understand the strange and arbitrary or contradictory rules the adult world imposes) or have dealt with a William (never sure whether he is the little boy pointing out the emperor’s lack of clothes or a nuisance defending his crimes with infuriating [il]logic. Although the world of middle class homes with cooks and gardeners has long vanished generations of adults and children alike laugh at William’s explotis, and often sympathise with either the hero or his long-suffering family.

Somehow Crompton’s William is so real, though somewhat larger than life, that he reduces the other characters to bit-players, and her female leads seem restricted to mere supporting roles. Despite (or perhaps because of) this her stories are enjoyed by girls as much as boys.

More William is the second book in the series and was published in 1922. It contains fourteen hilarious family comedies.