Technological Resources for Scholars

Fuller discussions of many of these resources are available at my Biblical Studies and Technological Tools blog.

Mapping

• Google Earth: This is a free downloadable program. Once you have it, take a look at some of these downloadable
  • Bible Geocoding at OpenBible.info
  • Bible Places addin
  • Sacred Destinations
  • Place of Worship 3D models
  • Check this post for ways of viewing your own or others' pictures into Google Earth.
• Biblical Mapping blog compilation: This is my growing list of mapping resources that are most helpful for biblical studies. It includes resources that are part of Bible software as well as many other online and/or downloadable resources.
• World Missions Atlas Project

Searching, Reading, and Downloading Online Books

For more details on some of the following listings as well as links to other resources, check this SBL article and this blog posting.

• Google Book Search - Note that you can choose only those books with "Full View." Such books are downloadable, or, with a Google account, you can add them to your online 'library.' Many books have an "About this book" link that provides considerable additional information.
  • Bible, Judaism, and Christianity via Google Book Search
  • Free Books in Biblical Studies and Related Fields (Google, Archive.org, etc.)
• Microsoft Live Book Search - Similar to Google Books, but different books have been digitized and different copyrights obtained. (E.g., Schweitzer's Quest is available for download here but not on Google.)
• Universal Digital Libary - Over a million books are digitized, and it includes books that are not available in either GoogleBook or Microsoft LiveBook.
• Google Scholar and Microsoft Live Search Academic: Another pair of search engines that look in journal articles, dissertations, and books.
• Tyndale House Library Catalogue
• Internet Archive
• Amazon's Search Inside feature: If you search on Amazon for keywords, it not only looks at titles, but it also look inside books. This only applies to some books which have the "Search Inside" feature indicating that the books have been scanned.
• Book Burro - A Firefox addin that searches WorldCat for nearby books as well as cheapest online prices.

Bibliographic and Research Tools

• Bibliographic and Research Tools (I've more thoroughly summarized these resources here.)
  • Zotero - The Next-Generation Research Tool (only works with Firefox, but this is my favorite apart from NotaBene's Orbis and Ibidem)
  • SBLHS Apparatus Builder is designed to produce apparatus (that’s citation footnotes and bibliography) for publications conforming to the Society for Biblical Literature's SBL Handbook of Style: For Ancient Near Eastern, Biblical, and Early Christian Studies.  It is currently ready to use in beta test.  It also includes integration with Ibidem, the bibliographic management tool of Nota Bene.
  • Index Theologicus at Tübingen - Biblical scholars should especially note the Scriptural Reference page. It a great help for finding articles on a specific verse.
  • LibraryThing
  • Amazon.com Your Media Library
  • ShelfServant.com
  • OttoBib - Free Automatic Bibliography Generator. Fast! MLA, APA, Chicago, Turabian
  • Google Notebook for IE7 or Firefox
  • Reference Search: Explicit Searches on Implicit References. This new search engine only works to search references to biblical/early Xn/rabbinic texts. (Check out the Reference List of works it is cataloging.) It will not direct to you online versions of those texts. It will find articles that mention that specific text.
• Other resources to try:
  • Add Search Providers to Internet Explorer 7 or to Firefox (right click on search box)
  • Language Resources
    • Google Language Tools - Resources in 14 languages; can search pages in other languages; provides rough translations for web pages or text
    • lingro - Includes dictionaries (6 languages, and since it is open content, users can add to the dictionary and also create their own word lists for review), a web viewer, and a file viewer. Works by rendering every word on a page or document as clickable and providing a popup translation of choice.
  • Data Visualization: Many Eyes
    • NT Persons Co-Occurrences
    • Faith and Political Party in USA

Teaching and Publishing Resources

• gettysburg press
• Second Life
• Facebook Gettysburg Lutheran Seminary
• LTSG blog.
• eXe Learning XHTML editor
• Free Exam Project
• Teach2000 (free flashcard program)