Two emerging standards are used for Bible reference works:
Large universities, such as York and University of
Toronto, have many CD-ROMs available to search in
public areas. You do not need a library card to use
these CD-ROMs. A list of CD-ROMs searchable at the at
University of Toronto libraries is at
gopher://utl2.library.utoronto.ca:70/11gopher_root70%3A%5B_libraries._cdrom%5D.
Tyndale Seminary also has several CD-ROMs,
such as ATLA, Religious and Theological Abstracts and
Books in Print. Consult the reference desk for a
current list.
Some bibliographic CD-ROMs of interest for biblical
and theological research include:
The Internet is a world wide network of computer networks.
Millions of computers are linked together so they can
communicate and share data with each other.
Get a direct Internet connection using PPP
(best) or SLIP; essential if you want to use the
World Wide Web. Be sure they have enough phone
lines, so you wont get busy signals. They
should have at least a T3 (or multiple T1 line)
connection from their computer to the Internet.
Commercial providers usually offer a free
startup kit that automatically connects you to
the Internet, and includes an email program and
Web browser. Once you are connected you can
easily download better programs if you like.
The major sources of Internet connections are:
Proprietary online services offer internal email to
other members, special databases and value added
services, such as stock quotes, newspapers, support
services for many computer vendors (especially
Compuserve), special discussion groups (e.g.
Christianity Online is special area of America
Online). Compuserve has some online theology courses,
of varying quality.
Many provide access to Internet, as a secondary bonus,
but the Internet features may be more limited than
direct Internet Service Providers.
All offer a free trial period of a month or a certain
number of hours (AOL: 800-413-9747; Compuserve: 800-
554-4079)
To subscribe to a hypothetical discussion group
called group@hostaddress, send a message to the
listserv@hostaddress with the single line:
To unsubscribe send a message to
listserv@hostaddress:
A thread is an ongoing discussion on a
topic. Many newsreaders can show threads side by
side, so it is easy for you to move to related
messages.
You can view a list of Usenet newsgroups within any
Newsreader program.
Forms of Electronic Information
Electronic research information is available in two main forms:
Advantages of Electronic Research Tools
Doing online and CD-ROM research offers many advantages over
printed books:
Major Types of Online and CD-ROM Resources
Some Important Terms
Standards for Electronic Document Publication
New electronic publishing standards allow books to be published
electronically and used with a variety of readers. The file
format allows an attractive display of the document, hypertext
linking and flexible searching.
CD-ROM Resources for Biblical and Theological Studies:
Reference books for Bible study:
Commentaries:
Bible Dictionaries:
Bible Multimedia:
Bible Atlases:
Historical and Theological Writings:
General Reference Books
Many general purpose encyclopedias,
dictionaries, atlases, books of quotations and other
reference books are available on CD-ROM. See the
lesson on Writer's Tools for more details.
Bibliographic Indexes
Hundreds of bibliographic CD-ROMs contain indexes to
periodical literature and books. You can quickly
search them by topic to find literature on any topic.
The Internet:
What is the Internet?
Connecting to the Internet
Types of connections:
Ways of connecting to the Internet:
Learning more about the Internet
Electronic Mail:
What is email?
Electronic mail (email) lets you send a message or
computer file to any computer which has an internet
connection, anywhere in the world. With email, you
can correspond with colleagues and friends all over
the world or engage in theological discussions even
with people you have never met.
Advantages of email:
Email addresses:
A typical address has this form:
userid@host
The host computer name is also called the domain. The
domain has several levels separated by a period,
moving right to left from highest domain to lowest.
For example, consider the email address:
hahne@chass.utoronto.ca
The userid is "hahne", "chass" is the computer name,
"utoronto" is the domain (in this case the school
name), "ca" is the high level domain for Canada. Other high
level domains include "edu" (educational institution,
usually in US), "org" (non-profit organization), "com"
(commercial) and "gov" (government).
Sending binary files via email:
The message normally can only be plain ASCII text. To
send a binary file (such as word processing document,
graphic or spreadsheet file), many mail readers have a
feature called MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail
Extension). This attaches the binary file to a plain
mail message in an encoded form. If this feature is
not available you can use a UUENCODE program.
Mail reader programs:
The following all require a direct Internet connection (e.g. PPP):
Online Discussion Groups:
Types of Online Discussion Groups:
subscribe group Your Name
To post messages to this list, send an
email message to group@hostaddress:
unsubscribe group
Some groups have other subscription procedures.
Finding a Relevant Group
There are discussion groups for practically any topic.
There is no one directory of all lists, but the following are
very useful:
You can also see other directories by searching the Web for
topics list "listserv AND directory".
Biblical and Theological Discussion Groups
FTP (File Transfer Protocol):
What is FTP?
FTP (File Transfer Protocol) is a standard way of
transferring a file from one computer to another over
the Internet.
Anonymous FTP
Anonymous FTP allows anyone to connect to another
computer without having an account there with a
password. This allows a person to download files the
computer owner wants to make publicly available.
Many anonymous FTP sites have thousands of public
domain and shareware programs you can download for
only the price of your connection time
FTP Programs
Windows 95 has a command line FTP program. The public
domain WS_FTP is a point and click Windows program that is
much easier to use
http://www.ipswitch.com/downloads/ws_ftp_LE.html.
FTP uwovax.uwo.ca
cd libsoft
cd lib_master
binary
get libdemo3.zip
bye
The "binary" command tells the FTP program that the
file is not a text file. Use the command "ASCII" or
"text" to download a text file. The "get" command
downloads a file (use "put" to upload a file).
The WS_FTP program gives you a graphical directory of files on the remote site, so you can download files by simply pointing and clicking on the file name.
Windows 95 has a Telnet application and there are public
domain ones for Windows 3.1 and Macintosh.
Gopher is rapidly being replaced by the World Wide
Web, but many universities still publish large textual
databases on Gopher. Once you access one Gopher site,
you can usually jump to others.
To access a specific Gopher from a Web browser, enter
gopher://gopher.chass.utoronto.ca
(or another appropriate address).
Newer versions (such as the shareware WSIRC 2.0 Video,
ftp://cs-ftp.bu.edu/irc/clients/pc/windows/wsirc)
allow real time group video conferencing (with an add-
on video board) and half duplex audio (like a
speakerphone, cannot hear while you speak).
IRC gained international fame during the 1991 Persian
Gulf War, where updates from around the world came in
real time and IRC users gathered channel to hear these
reports. IRC had similar uses during the coup against
Boris Yeltsin in September 1993, where IRC users from
Moscow were giving live reports about the unstable
situation there.
For more information and a list of sites see
http://www.kei.com/irc.html.
You do not need to know where the document is located,
since the Web browser software takes care of that for
you. Document can transparently link to other
documents anywhere in the world.
A URL has the following form:
Most Web browsers can display pictures, sounds and
videos, although there are text-only browsers. Videos
are currently a slow to obtain, although that will
change in the next two years. Real-time sound quality
is AM radio quality, but you can get better quality if
you are willing to wait a long time for a download.
A Web browser can also access other Internet
resources, such as anonymous FTP, email and Usenet
news groups.
Some popular Web browsers:
Telnet:
Gopher:
What is Gopher?
Gopher is a menu system that organizes textual
information on the Internet to make it available to
others. Items are presented in a series of hierarchial
menus. The name comes from the mascot for the
University of Minnesota ("golden gophers"), where the
software was developed. The name also refers to the
slang term "go-fer," meaning someone who fetches
things for another.
Connecting to a Gopher
To access a Gopher, type "gopher" from the command
prompt if you have a direct Internet connection. You
can also include the Internet address of a Gopher you
know about on the command line.
Finding Information on Gopher
Many gophers link to search programs that help you find
information which is available on Gophers. Two major search programs
are available:
Some Gophers of Interest for Biblical and Theological
Studies
Biblical and Theological:
Bibliographic research:
Live online group discussions:
IRC ("Interent Relay Chat")
IRC ("Internet Relay Chat") enables a group of people
to communicate together in real time. You connect to
a "channel", a virtual place with a topic of
conversation. When you type a comment, everyone sees
it at once.
MUD (Multi-User Dungeons/Domains/Dialogs) and MOO (Mult-
User Object-Oriented)
These let you move about in and interact with people
in a virtual world. They were originally developed
for online dungeon and dragons-type games. These
concepts are being used for online courses and
interactive discussion groups. For information and a
list of sites, see
gopher://home.asctlab.utexas.edu:70/11/MUD.
World Wide Web:
What is the World Wide Web?
The World Wide Web ("The Web") is a hypertext
information system which stores files on the Internet.
Web documents can contain text, graphics, sounds and
videos. Documents are linked with hotlinks so the
user can jump to other documents or places within the
same document by clicking on a highlighted word in the
document. "Web" indicates that there is an intricate
cross linkage of items, much like a spider web.
HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol)
HTTP is the standard mechanism for transferring
information over the World Wide Web. A HTTP
Server sends documents to a various computers
whenever they are requested.
HTML (Hypertext Markup Language)
HTML is the standard way of storing documents on the World
Wide Web. Documents are marked up to indicate levels
of headings, attributes such as boldface and italics,
position of graphics, etc. The document focuses more
on the content and leave the exact display format of
the document to the software on the client computer
(the one viewing the Web document). So the exact
appearance of the document may be slightly different
on a Sun workstation than a PC or Macintosh. To learn
how to create your own Web pages, see
http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/tut/ or
http://home.mcom.com/home/how-to-create-web-services.html.
URL (Universal Resource Locator)
A URL is a standard way of referring to a resource
which can be accessed on the internet.
protocol://host/path/file
where,
protocol = the type of internet resource.
The most common are:
Here are some typical URLs:
http://www-writing.berkeley.edu/chorus/bible/index.html;
ftp://uwovax.uwo.ca/libsoft/lib_master/libdemo3.zip
(FTP to
uwovax.uwo.ca and get the file libdemo3.zip from the
subdirectory libsoft/lib_master). All FTP addresses are
listed in URL form in these notes.
host = the address of the remote computer providing
the resource
path = the directory or subdirectory path on the host
computer
file = the file you want to access
Web Browsers
A Web browser is a graphical program that lets you
move about through the information available on the
World Wide Web. You can view documents and graphics
with hypertext links. Simply click on a link with the
mouse to jump from site to site and document to
document.
World Wide Web Sites
Biblical studies:
Textual criticism and biblical manuscripts:
Biblical languages and linguistics:
Online theological journals:
Guides to Internet resources in religious and
theological studies:
Church History:
General humanities Computing:
Christian literature, sermons and general
Christian information:
Religious studies, Classics and philosophy:
Finding information on the Internet:
Online Discussion Groups
One of the best ways to locate things on the Interent
is to ask about it on an online discussion group.
Pick a listserv or newsgroup that has a topic relevant
to the question. You can subscribe to a list
temporarily just to ask your question, then
unsubscribe after you get your answer.
Frequently Asked Questions Lists
There are FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) lists for
most discussion groups. You can download one of these
lists to find an answer to many questions. For
example, there is a FAQ list about Bible software at
http://www.storm.ca/~sabigail/faqs.htm
Most Usenet FAQ
lists are maintained at
ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet-by-hierarchy.
Some other good search sites are:
If you have a shell account (command line), simply enter "archie filename" to find a list of sites and subdirectories.
WSArchie is an easy to use Archie client for Windows (http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/town/square/cc83/).
You can also search Archie on the World Wide Web Archie. You simply fill in a form. This is the easiest to use, but slower. See http://hoohoo.ncsa.uiuc.edu/archie.html. A complete list of Archie servers is on http://pubweb.nexor.co.uk/public/archie/servers.html.
Searching an online catalog saves time since the matching references can be transfered to a personal bibliographic database manager. It is also quicker to search a catalog electronically than to flip through a card catalog.
Some catalogs will email your matches to you so you can import the results to your personal bibliographic database manager, such as Library Master.
Some sample World Wide Web based catalogs include:
Many library catalogs use the Z30.50 protocol, which is a standard way of providing databas einformation on the Internet. This allows you to set up a single search program to access many catalogs and is much faster than using the World Wide Web. A very nice, inexpensive program for searching online catalogs is:
Many online information services such as DIALOG have Internet gateways. You can search massive indexes of periodical literature for a fee.
Other Internet Resources for Biblical and Theological
Studies:
Reading Assignment:
Required
Recommended