From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Tue Jan 22 2002 - 17:28:00 EST
I'm opening up a can of worms that is not directly related to our focus on
the Biblical Greek text and the Biblical Greek language but that is of
concern to most list-members nevertheless. I would guess that responses
ought to be sent to me OFF-LIST unless respondents are quite confident that
what they have to say is of interest and value to all current list-members.
At 6:01 PM +0000 1/19/02, Timothy Friberg wrote (inter alia)
:
> II. Is there a way to search the texts of B-Greek archives (and not just
> the subject lines) in order to find past references to AGNT and/or ANLEX
> that might contain the same valuable input for correction or alternative
> analyses?
I have found hundreds of messages since the late summer of 1995 that bear
upon Tim's question, and I shall respond to that concern of his off-list.
But there's another big question rearing its head here; it's been raised
several times in the past couple years or more, and that is, essentially:
Is it possible to do a thorough search of the B-Greek archives for the past
several years and retrieve all the messages bearing upon any given Biblical
Greek text or question?
I have my own archives in the form of Eudora mailboxes beginning in August
of 1995; using Eudora 5.1's very powerful search engine, I can have a
listing of all messages by date and sender that contain the search term
anywhere in the message, and I can instantly open the message I choose from
that list. I wish it were possible for any list-member or for any inquirer
who can use the internet to do the same.
As things now stand, we have two separate archives. one located at
http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek/archives/index.html
houses archives from May of 1992 to June 28, 1998 --but there are two
significant lacunae of several months each. The other is located at our
list's major site:
http://franklin.oit.unc.edu/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=b-greek&text_mode=0
and the archives here from June 5, 1998 up to the most recent message. BUT,
although these archives are inclusive of all those messages, it is
impossible, so far as I am aware, to search more than 500 messages at a
time using the Lyris search engine available at the site. It's easy enough
to go back all the way to June of 1998 and look at a sequence of 500
messages beginning then or at any other selected initial point--but I don't
think it's possible to do a search at the site from any database extending
beyond the most recent 500 messages.
I'm really wondering if we can do better. I'm wondering if we could find a
site that would house AT LEAST all of the archives I have and perhaps the
others going back to 1992--and that is also equipped with a search engine
that can do something like what Eudora can do on my archives.
There are at least two problems here:
(1) finding a (cost-free?) site that will house the collection (my own
collection runs to 132 MB inclusive of Aug 95 thru Dec 01)--that may be the
easier part;
(2) finding one or more list-members with sufficient TIME and EXPERTISE to
massage my own (Macintosh-formatted) Eudora mailboxes into the proper
(Unix?) format for web consultation and searching. Jonathan Robie spent a
very great amount of time preparing the <www.ibiblio.org> archives a few
years back, but he has been far too busy to return to that task and finish
it. While this is something I'd like to be able to do myself, and I do have
the time now that I am retired, I DO NOT have the technical competence to
do what's required. While I can supply the data, I can't format it to make
it available in a useful format. This would be a labor of love for anyone
undertaking it.
As I noted above, it will probably be best if respondents reply to me
directly OFF-LIST. If anything comes of this, I shall certainly post the
news about it to the list as a whole.
--
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
Most months: 1647 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cwconrad@ioa.com
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
---
B-Greek home page: http://metalab.unc.edu/bgreek
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