Jason Fowler, one of my gifted colleagues here at the library, has been diligently working away at developing an application that would take the tables of contents from our library’s most frequently used theological journals, make them available online, (wait for it……) publish RSS feeds for them, and (wait for it……) even publish discipline-specific RSS feeds for them! From our library’s announcement:

The James P. Boyce Centennial Library would like to announce the beta test of a new web service designed to deliver the table of contents from some of our most frequently used journals and serials to our faculty and students. JTOC, short for Journal Table of Contents, is a an application that provides online delivery of this content through a series of web pages and RSS feeds. JTOC allows students and faculty to keep abreast of what the library acquires in their field or favorite journals. To begin using JTOC, please visit http://library.sbts.edu/jtoc.

The library’s goal in designing JTOC was to create a simple system that would allow the content to be delivered in a quick and timely manner. Because text entry is generally a time consuming exercise, and because scanning is quick, the library’s staff decided to use images to distribute the content.

How should one use JTOC? The most useful way to use it is probably through setting up JTOC’s RSS feeds in a feed reader. Most often, this can be done within JTOC by simply clicking on an RSS feed button that looks like this –> . JTOC offers a variety of feeds. The main feed allows you to keep up with the library’s most recently received journals, but JTOC also serves feeds for specific journals and subject areas.

When you click on a feed button within JTOC, Firefox will give you several options for managing your feeds. Many find the most useful method for keeping up with feeds to be Google Reader. If you select this option in Firefox, and you have a Google account, you can add the feed directly to your Google Reader. When you use Google Reader, you do not even have to visit the JTOC site to see the new journals the library acquires.

The library hopes that you find this new service valuable to your research. Please keep in mind that JTOC is still in a beta test phase. We ask for your patience as we discover any issues that might arise with it.

Well done, Jason.

Popularity: 21% [?]

Libraries, Research | 2 Comments »

G. K. Chesterton’s fantastical works of fiction such as his extensive use of fairies, according to Alison Milbank at the University of Nottingham, had an apparently large influence on J. R. R. Tolkien and his Lord of the Rings. Alison argues that Chesterton’s attempts at using fiction to cause his readers to engage the real world in new ways resulted in Tolkien’s appropriation of a thoroughly fictional world — so fictional, in fact, it takes on a sense or reality — in order to engender a theology that is both practical and artistic. They both openly and intentionally created a fictional tradition of sorts in order to render a theological purpose more accessible, and in so doing foster relationships between people and God. She writes in Chesterton and Tolkien As Theologians: The Fantasy of the Real (London/New York: T and T Clark, 2007):

If Chesterton and Tolkien are theologians, as the title of this book claims, it is because they offer a theology of art as practice. Practical Theology as it is taught in seminaries and theological colleges in very often the taking of theological ideas and realizing them in practical activity, or reflecting upon experience with theological tools. …As a gift it likewise cements social relations and draws attention to the exchanges between people, and with the sacred. (p. 166)

Much no doubt remains to be said both in response to Milbanks’s appraisal of Chesterton and Tolkien. On the same cart of new books to be added to our library, however, was another treatment of fictional traditions: The Invention of Sacred Tradition, Lewis and Hammer, eds., Cambridge University Press, 2007. From the introduction:

In the domain of religion, we find an analogous situation, where historically verifiable traditions coexist with recent innovations whose origins are spuriously projected back into time.

Among these recent innovations which have invented traditions for themselves and which are given chapters in this book are Scientology, Castenada’s don Juan, Mormonism, Sun Myung Moon, Rosicrucianism, and Zoroastrianism. As it typical of much contemporary scholarship, however, they also attribute a false tradition to the New Testament due to supposed authorial “inauthenticities,” and thereby label most the New Testament to be forgeries (as well as the Pentateuch).

The combination of these two books in my thoughts did make for an interesting contrast, though. One looks at Chesterton’s and Tolkien’s fictional traditions as a positive source of good theology, traditions so fantastical and metaphorical that their place in both literary and theological history is certain. The other looks at the fictional traditions of Scientology, Mormonism, and the like as dubious sources which are not bases for truth. The combination raises a good discussion about how and when to appeal to tradition as a source — whether that tradition is real, fictional for instructive and artful purposes, or just plain fictional and delusive.

Popularity: 19% [?]

Books, Quotes, Theology | No Comments »

I think they are starting to get it. I asked a few days ago when and whether academic publishers would start recognizing that increased accessibility to their works results in increased exposure and usage. I did not, however, mention that many of the Ivy League university presses here in the States do already seem to be moving toward making academic content available and accessible in full text free of charge, certainly hoping that the result will be greater exposure. The Princeton Theological Review and Harvard University’s arts and sciences faculty’s plan (see here and here) to post academic papers online for free access, unless scholars specifically indicate otherwise, are good examples.

Earlier this month I noticed that the State University of New York (SUNY) Press announced an initiative to sell .pdf files of new books for $20.00 through their “directtext” option, a trend that will no doubt increase as libraries opt to fill digital repositories rather than handing over $75.00 for a hardcover that will need to be squeezed into already packed library shelves. See also Cheaper by the .pdf, but still . . .

Stanford University Press, however, has gone even further and jumped straight into the deep end. Their blog announced last week:

Stanford University Press is pleased to announce that you can now search the full text of our books via Google Book Search. We are currently still in the process of uploading and scanning our backlist, but there are already over a thousand Stanford titles in Google Book Search. When the project is completed, all of our books will be searchable electronically. …[We] are excited to make it easier for readers to discover content and find books most suited to their interests.

Thanks to languagehat.com for pointing this out: STANFORD BOOKS FULLY SEARCHABLE.

Popularity: 15% [?]

Books, Web | No Comments »