Date: Thu, 21 May 92 01:46:35 EST
From: KRAFT@PENNDRLS.UPENN.EDU

Brief Review of American Bible Society CD-ROM, experimental
release (1991) = "ABS Reference Bible" with Innotech "Findit"
software accessing. (Approximately $195 US.)
American Bible Society, 1865 Broadway, NY NY 10023.

by Robert Kraft, University of Pennsylvania (19 May 1992)

The ABS Reference Bible is is a slightly revised and repurposed
version of the "FABS Electronic Bible" that was issued around
1988-89 by the Foundation for Advanced Biblical Studies, and was
reviewed by Tzvee Zahavy in OFFLINE 30 (Sept/Nov 1990). Please
consult that review for details regarding the general contents of
the disk and capabilities of the software. My intention here is
to record my own reactions as a not-in-the-least disinterested
party to some of the developments represented in the ABS entry
into CD-ROM preparation and distribution.

I am not "disinterested" insofar as some of the CATSS and CCAT
data that has been collected and prepared under my guidance
appears on the (FABS/)ABS disk, and there has already been some
discussion about releasing an updated and corrected version of
these and related materials through cooperation between ABS and
CCAT/CATSS. And I am not in a position to see the ABS CD-ROM as
first-time users will see it, insofar as I have years of
experience using TLG and PHI disks, among others. Finally, in
this mood of confession, please be advised that I have only spent
an hour or so with the ABS disk, and have had access only to the
electronic help files that come on the disk itself (I have no
printed manual accompanying it). But since Tzvee says that an
hour is enough to learn to use this software adequately, I
shouldn't make too many excuses.

On the whole, I am embarrassed by the ABS Reference Bible CD-ROM.
Not that it does not contain lots of useful "biblical and
related" material of various sorts in various languages (Hebrew,
Greek, Latin, German, Spanish, English), or that the software
does not support various sophisticated functions (e.g. searching
with and, or, and not options), but the virtually ironclad
linkage between the data and the software via pre-indexed entries
and the relative inflexibility of the software in stepping the
user through various menus and windows are stifling to one who
has enjoyed the freedom of experimenting by means of IBYCUS
searching, for example. The ABS disk is cumbersome to use. It
represents a "kindergarten" approach. It is confining. That does,
of course, pay dividends on the "learning curve" side of things.
But I felt somewhat insulted and shortchanged.

Still, I could live with all that if the results were generally
reliable and helpful. That means, primarily, if the indexing and
related synthesizing of materials was done with sufficient
foresight and accuracy. My hour with the disk does not encourage
me to believe this to be true. Some examples:

I first looked at the first item on the list of resources -- the
Abingdon Dictionary of the Bible. This could be very useful for
some general reference purposes. I looked for "LXX" and was told
that there was one entry, which turned out to be one of those
frustrating cross-reference items that said "see SEPTUAGINT." So
I went back to the search sequence and requested Septuagint, only
to be told by an aggravating mustard colored box that the term
"septuagint" (the searches are not case-sensitive) did not occur!
So I looked closer at the index, through which one must go to
find things in the data bank, and found that it is a very
incomplete representation of the data, and could often be quite
misleading or unhelpful, even on terms it includes. For example,
if I wanted to check out occurrences of the location "Alexandria"
(I was still hot on the trail of "Septuagint"), I would not be
led to passages where "Clement of Alexandria" was mentioned,
since "Alexandria" is indexed there as part of his name. Nor
could I look for unidentified "Clement" persons, but only for the
specific "of Rome" or "VI" or the like. When I found the initials
of the author who had contributed a certain article to the
dictionary and wished to know who that was and what else had been
contributed by the same person, the index did not allow this. And
so forth. (Incidentally, I did not successufully locate any
material on the disk that detailed the sources of the data or any
associated bibliography; I hope this was due simply to my haste!)

Ok, maybe things are different with other files, I conjectured,
always ready to give the benefit of the doubt. And I wanted to
see how the Hebrew and Greek looked, in any event. So I played
for a few minutes with those files. Disaster. They are, at least
in my configuration, displayed in transliteration, and the
indexing of words does not attempt to differentiate between
significant symbols and (for indexing purposes) insignificant. So
in Greek, the breathing marks and accents (except not all of the
Greek texts have diacritics on this disk!) may separate closely
related words (morphologically) into very distant portions of the
index, and the Hebrew indexing is even less useful, for various
reasons relating to coding and other issues. (The coding used is
similar to but not identical with the Michigan-Claremont-CCAT and
the TLG-PHI-Beta systems).

Ok, those are often difficult issues to resolve; what about the
other aids -- the juxtapositon of English meanings with the
morphologically analyzed Hebrew words, for example. Such a good
idea, but so disastrously presented! In Genesis 1.1, for the
opening letter of the biblical text, the English column informs
us that the "B" of "B.:R")$YT" is "Beth, 2nd letter, 2" without
breathing a word about its significance (as a preposition, "in")
here! Similarly, when we come to the conjunctive "W" we are told
that it is "waw, 6th letter, 6" without any clue about its
joining power ("and"). I didn't bother to check for "L" or
other single letter prepositions.

So the English column was done automatically, without thought.
Maybe the problems are only with these single letters/numbers.
I'm still trying to be forgiving, but it's getting very
difficult. I read down further in the Genesis text and am quite surprised/shocked/embarrased to find in Gen 1.3 that God
apparently willed the "Nile river" into existence with the word
")OWR," which our translations have tended to see as a reference
to "light." A quick check establishes that in 1 Samuel 14.36,
Saul fought the (blank! ¡Philistines—) unto Nile river as well!
Friends, such things are not very helpful, and quickly detract
from other values undoubtedly present on the ABS CD-ROM. They do
not inspire confidence, although in fairness they are probably
not representative of the vast majority of data on the disk.
Still, I feel embarrassed.

What is the bottom line? Caveat emptor! You can do a lot of
things with this software and data, but some of them will be
painful and there are other things you might want to do but will
be unable. It is an excellent example of two major problems in
our transition to an electronic information world: (1) haste
makes waste, or at least doesn't always accomplish the desired
result. There is no excuse for FABS, in the first place, to
release such shoddy indexes and English glossing; or for ABS, in
its reuse of the FABS materials, not to do something about it.
(2) Prohibiting access to the data except through the pre-defined
indices and software is to take large steps backwards from what
electronic tools and resources can and should be. If I have
better software for searching and retrieving these materials (and
I do; perhaps you do too, depending on what tasks you wish to
perform), why should I be tied to someone else's idea of what I
ought to be able to do with them? In the long run (and even, in
some things, in the short), such an approach can only impede
progress in the scholarly use of this data.

I hope it is reassuring to any who understand that last point
that my own position in the discussions with ABS about jointly
producing a new "biblical" CD-ROM is that the CATSS/CCAT data
cannot be tied to the software. I hope that the data can be
accessed by the software that is provided, for those who wish to
do so, but for others who wish to go further or elsewhere in
their use of the data, it must also be accessible independently
of that software. Thus we can hope to have the best, or at least
some taste, of both worlds, in an effort both to make things easy
for some users, while at the same time to encourage other users
to explore and experiment with other approaches and applications.

//end//
Greg,
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