[sword-devel] Virtual Library of Theology

[avolunteer DrStovallFoundation]

Dear Anja and sword developers,
I have MAs in Linguistics from Michigan and Practical Field from a 
Theological University.  I have solved problems by searching on parts 
of speech in the Greek New Testament.  I am very interested in what Anja 
is proposing.

I spend most of my life doing social development and disaster relief in 
the third world.  But until Sept 2, I am in Europe and willing to be 
part of a team doing what Anja has proposed as long as it is done in 
Python, RPython, or has one of these as a wrapper around it.  Why?  
Because other languages either lack power or cannot be easily taught to 
third world people who have very little education and so little self-
confidence that they need to see immediate results.  By giving them 
something they can understand with a little instruction they feel as 
though they are part of the project and a few of them will continue to 
learn.  Give them a package and they think this is just another gift 
which is not a real opportunity for them to have a part in really 
changing the world.  I can't count how many relief workers have said to 
me, 'When will these people start doing something for themselves instead 
of just looking for a hand-out?'  The answer is simple.  Whenever we 
we do not give them complete aid but rather give them the start of a 
project and expect them to complete it with us with our help.  This is 
true even if we have the complete project already done and are hiding 
the details and expecting them to work with us to find the solution.

Yours truly,
a volunteer


--- Anja Hofmann <anja.hofmann at ub.uni-tuebingen.de> wrote:

> Hello!
> To introduce myself, my name is Anja Hofmann and I am currently working
> at the University of Tuebingen on a project called "Virtual Library of
> Theology" while doing a PhD in computational linguistics. The website is
> www.virtheo.de (note: not all pages have been translated into English yet).
> Since May, I have been reading this list and I have shown the BibleCS
> tool and the Sword Web /BibleTool interface to my colleague responsible
> for the theological content.
> What I would love to do: adding a full text search over existing bibles
> and other theological texts, that allows users to view translations and
> originals in parallel and to access dictionary entries directly from the
> text.
> There would be one public search interface and one for university
> members (including databases with licence restrictions).
> My colleague listened to my ideas, but thought that
> a. theologians (and other users) would search mainly based on content,
> not on linguistic criteria (such as e.g. all verb forms of "to give").
> b. people would prefer to work with printed versions as they also need
> them for references.
> What are your experiences/opions?
> Thank you very much in advance.
> Yours sincerely,
> Anja Hofmann
> 
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