Producing modules that are not being produced

[A.D. Riddle]

When I first got started with Accordance, I would have described Accordance as a tool for academic and scholarly study of texts. Over the last decade or so, however, it seems more and more attention is given to pastoral and theological interests. One result of this seems to be that when someone requests an academic reference work, it has become more common to hear that there would first need to be considerable user interest before Accordance even thinks about developing the requested item. I personally feel that this is a very unfortunate trend, but I expect I am powerless to stop it. In the good old days, it did not seem to be such a high priority that there first needed to be such high demand.

 

One example of this situation arose when a user requested Yeivin’s Introduction to the Tibernian Masorah.

https://www.accordancebible.com/forums/topic/17263-introduction-to-the-tiberian-masorah/

 

I would like to propose a possible way forward for dealing with such requests, especially when no e-text is available. The idea comes from Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL). Many years ago, I helped to edit some e-texts for them. CCEL placed a rough-OCR text on their website along with a progress chart organized by page numbers taken from the original printed volume. Volunteers could log-in to copy-edit the text against a scanned image of the original page and to add hypertext links.

 

I wonder if Accordance and its users would be open to such an idea. After Accordance negotiated production rights, I (or anyone) could make a high-quality scan, OCR it, and place both images and e-text on a password-protected page. Someone would voluntarily assume the role of project manager, and volunteers would help copy-edit and tag one or two pages, maybe more. After a few months, we should have a fully useable e-text that Accordance can then package as a module. Perhaps volunteers who produced X amount of work could be rewarded with a free copy of the module.

 

I know there are a few works that would be great in Accordance (such as Yeivin), and if production time vs. high demand is the chief obstacle, I would gladly volunteer to help others develop the e-text.

 

A.D.

 

[Donald Cobb]

I think this is a great idea. I have often thought that a way forward for research works would be enlisting volunteers with a good academic knowledge of the area of expertise of such and such a work.

 

My interest is in more in NT. I have already made the request for Moulton and Milligan, a work that is somewhat dated but, AFAIK, has yet to be replaced by something more up to date. It came as part of the basic package in BibleWorks and is sold by "that other company" but has yet to be picked up by Accordance. This Lexicon in now in the public domain, so it would only need to be put into electronic format.

 

Would Accordance be willing to put out a request for enlisting volunteers and working on some initial projects?

[A.D. Riddle]

Dear Accordance,

 

Is there any interest on the company's part in leveraging user interest and ability to make less-popular resources available as modules? It would only take a handful of serious users to make this possible.

 

A.D.

[Jordan S]

I will look into this.

[jlm]

Another example of coordinating volunteers to produce an e-text is the Bailly 2020 Greek-French lexicon. If you can read some French, see http://gerardgreco.free.fr/spip.php?article52&lang=frand the “Présentation du Projet” PDF near the bottom of that page.

[docdave]

I would be glad to volunteer for projects like this.

[A. Smith]

This is a fantastic idea. I am sure the desire for some of these more niche works is great enough some would volunteer for the project simply to be assured that it will be produced in a reasonable amount of time. 

[Jordan S]

We are exploring this option. In doing so, it would help to get a better lay of the land.

 

If you are interesting in volunteering your time to prepare files of primary texts or secondary resources, direct message me with:

 

Your name

email address

 

What project you had in mind: Title, Author, and other bibliographic data.

 

Is this a “public domain” work not under copyright?

If not public domain, who owns the copyright?

 

Is there a digital copy available?

 

Any helpful weblinks

 

-----

 

Also, if you did not have any particular project in mind but are generally interested, then direct message me. Maybe include your area(s) of interest.

[Michel Gilbert]

Since it has been requested many times before, as far back as 2005 (https://forums.accordancebible.com/forums/topic/269-zerwick/?p=970), I would guess that one of the works that many would volunteer for would be Zerwick’s A Grammatical Analysis of the Greek New Testament. Maybe it could even be offered by the end of the month!

 

The question I have about volunteering is, will it all be done in Unicode, or at least would we be able to export as Unicode?

 

Regards,

 

Michel

[R. Mansfield]

I would guess that one of the works that many would volunteer for would be Zerwick’s A Grammatical Analysis of the Greek New Testament. 

 

I would love to see Zerwick in Accordance and posted that linked request back when I was just a "plain old user." I actually have a partially-completed bootleg of Zerwick in a User Notes file. But I couldn't share it for any new project. "Fruit of the poisonous tree" and all that.

 

[Λύχνις Δαν]

The one I wanted was North and Hillard, on which I had made a start for a user tool some little while ago. I could dust that off. Though honestly Dickey would probably be a better place to start.

The other one I want but which is a bunch of work is Smyth.

 

I'll send something through to Jordan later.

 

Thx

D

[A.D. Riddle]

Every few months or so, I really really wish I had an electronic version of Even-Shoshan's New Concordance of the Bible. This is one I would volunteer to help "clean up." An Because of Accordance's search capabilities, it might not be necessary to reproduce the entire text of Even-Shoshan. (Plus, it would be a good chance to correct the reference Lev 47:15, which does not exist.)

 

A.D.

[A.D. Riddle]

Does this idea have any chance of living a successful and rewarding life? I remain interested. I keep having to reference Yeivin, and each time I do, I wish that I had a Scriptrue index, but even better would be a complete digital version of the book.

 

+1000

 

A.D.

[jlm]

On 9/10/2020 at 1:06 PM, A.D. Riddle said:

I would like to propose a possible way forward for dealing with such requests, especially when no e-text is available. The idea comes from Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL). Many years ago, I helped to edit some e-texts for them. CCEL placed a rough-OCR text on their website along with a progress chart organized by page numbers taken from the original printed volume. Volunteers could log-in to copy-edit the text against a scanned image of the original page and to add hypertext links.

 

 

 

 

I wonder if Accordance and its users would be open to such an idea. After Accordance negotiated production rights, I (or anyone) could make a high-quality scan, OCR it, and place both images and e-text on a password-protected page. Someone would voluntarily assume the role of project manager, and volunteers would help copy-edit and tag one or two pages, maybe more. After a few months, we should have a fully useable e-text that Accordance can then package as a module. Perhaps volunteers who produced X amount of work could be rewarded with a free copy of the module.

 

 

I recently came across another example of this kind of workflow. There's an organization called Distributed Proofreaders that is the largest producer of Project Gutenberg e-books. They managed to turn out an average of seven books a day in March 2023. Many hands make light work. This is relevant for two reasons. First, their workflow could be a model for Accordance or some organization with which Accordance contracts to imitate, in order to convert books still under copyright. Second, books no longer protected by copyright in the USA could be converted by working with Distributed Proofreaders. Their books go through three stages of proofreading after OCR, and include page numbers. All that's missing is tagging for Scripture and other resources.

 

As an example, when Dr. Russell Fuller gave an eAcademy talk on Finding Messiah in the Old Testament—with the Rabbis (Vimeo), one of the introductions to rabbinic thought that he suggested was Kaufmann Kohler, Jewish Theology, 1918. Project Gutenberg has digitized this book. Do a bit of search and replace to link the references to Scripture, the Mishnah, the Talmud, etc., and you have an Accordance resource ready to go—or perhaps a User Tool.

 

Edited April 11, 2023 by jlm
Fixed typo

[josephbradford]

I would certainly volunteer. You can count me in. I think if someone worked a substantial amount of time on a particular project rewarding them with the module is also a great incentive to get others onboard. Even a discount. Regardless of an incentive, I would love to help. 
 

You’d just have to have a group that received info and then people could join the project based upon their skill set. Even if you requested “credentials” to be a part of the project I think that’s fine. 
 

Think Wikipedia. Who would have thought that would have replaced Britannica? 
 

The main obstacle is going to be the bureaucracy. How will the emperor maintain control without the ultimate power in the universe?  Which member of the accordance team will be given the honor of more work to oversee/coordinate? Will they have to hire a new employee for this position? Then the lawyers will get involved. They’ll want to know if it’s legal in all 50 states and then they will have to discuss it with lawyers in the European Union. And how will you not pay the volunteers, that just can’t happen.  And so on and so forth… well it was a good idea while it lasted. 
 

All joking aside, I’ll join the alliance. 

[Dr. Nathan Parker]

I’m reading this discussion and sending it over to my manager to also take a look a it. I’m still trying to get a better idea of what you’re discussing/proposing here. If you can help me out, that would be great!

[jlm]

On 4/16/2023 at 10:50 PM, Nathan Parker said:

I’m reading this discussion and sending it over to my manager to also take a look a it. I’m still trying to get a better idea of what you’re discussing/proposing here. If you can help me out, that would be great!

This thread is meant to deal with a common problem with module requests. There's a classic resource that many Accordance users would like to have, but no etext exists, because it's too old. OCR and proofreading are labor-intensive, and OakTree has limited resources, so they decide not to produce the module, or give it such a low priority that they never actually produce it. The proposal is that users who want the module and could dedicate time to helping produce it do so. If the text is protected by copyright, then OakTree would have to negotiate rights and organize the work, providing volunteers with pieces of the text to proofread. If it's not under copyright, this could be organized independently by users, who could then present OakTree with an etext,

[Dr. Nathan Parker]

Thanks! It’s something we can chat about. We’ve had people volunteer for module development in the past, but once they saw how much effort is involved in producing modules, they gave it another thought. 🙂 

 

If users want to try to produce clean eTexts of select classic modules they want to see in Accordance, that could help expedite those. I could find out from our module developers what formats they prefer.

[David Rodriguez]

If you provide the details for how one goes about creating modules for texts that are not under license, I’d be willing to help produce the module. I suspect that the texts that are not under license would make it onto accordance significantly faster than licensed texts, thought I’d be willing to help with that too. 

[Mike Atnip]

On 4/19/2023 at 2:37 PM, Nathan Parker said:

Thanks! It’s something we can chat about. We’ve had people volunteer for module development in the past, but once they saw how much effort is involved in producing modules, they gave it another thought. 🙂 

 

As one who has tinkered with putting texts online on a personal website, these things are not hard, just time-consuming. I remember the day when everyone and his brother and his uncle and his cousin started a blog. Now only a few dedicated people keep them up. The reason: it takes time to produce quality content. For digitized texts, it doesn't take a lot of brains, it takes a lot of meticulous, time-consuming, detail-oriented labor to produce a clean, accurate, marked-up text.

[Dr. Nathan Parker]

Thanks everyone for the feedback! User Tools are one way to get Public Domain content into Accordance. In terms of our module development process, I won’t share it publicly here (since it’s internal information), but for those who are seriously interested in module development, you’re welcome to PM me, and I can have my manager chat with you about it.