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<h1 class="banner">About <em>Syriaca.org: The Syriac Reference Portal</em>
</h1>
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<img width="100%" title="About Syriaca.org: The Syriac Reference Portal" src="http://syriac.library.vanderbilt.edu/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/About-Syriac.jpg" alt=""/>
<p class="caption">BALA26: Syriac Byzantine Rite Euchologion. Manuscript on paper, early 17th Century. Monastery of Our Lady of Balamand, Lebanon, MS. 31. Photo: Hill Museum & Manuscript Library.</p>
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<h2>Online Reference Works</h2>
<p>The publications of <em>Syriaca.org</em> combine emerging methods in the field of <a href="http://digitalhumanities.org:8080/dhq/vol/3/1/index.html">digital humanities</a> with the rigour of traditional scholarship in history and philology. Four digital reference works have been published and more are in preparation:</p>
<ul>
<li>
<a href="geo/index.html">
<em>The Syriac Gazetteer</em>
</a> (Thomas A. Carlson and David A. Michelson, eds.) is a geographical reference work of all places relevant to Syriac Studies, with no temporal or spatial restrictions.</li>
<li>
<a href="persons/index.html">
<em>The Syriac Biographical Dictionary</em>
</a> (David A. Michelson, Jeanne-Nicole Mellon Saint-Laurent, Nathan P. Gibson, and Daniel L. Schwartz, general eds.) is a multi-volume guide to persons related to Syriac culture or history. This resource serves as an authority file or standard reference system for use in cataloguing persons of interest to Syriac studies.
<ul>
<li>
<a href="q/index.html">
<em>Volume 1: Qadishe: A Guide to the Syriac Saints</em>
</a> (Jeanne-Nicole Mellon Saint-Laurent and David A. Michelson, eds.) is a digital catalogue of saints venerated in the
Syriac tradition.</li>
<li>
<a href="authors/index.html">
<em>Volume 2: A Guide to Syriac Authors</em>
</a> (David A. Michelson and Nathan P. Gibson, eds.) is a handbook of persons who wrote in Syriac or otherwise had an influence on Syriac literature.</li>
<li>
<em>Volume 3: Miscellaneous Syriac Persons</em> (David A. Michelson, Nathan P. Gibson, and Daniel L. Schwartz, eds.) is a biographical guide to persons relevant to the study of Syriac history, literature, and culture.</li>
<li>
<em>Volume 4: Anonymous Syriac Persons</em> (Daniel L. Schwartz, David A. Michelson, and Nathan P. Gibson) is a biographical guide to persons relevant to the study of Syriac history, literature, and culture.</li>
<li>[<em>Notabene:</em> At present, volumes 3 and 4 are accessible directly through the main <a href="persons/search.html">
<em>SBD</em> search page</a>]. </li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>
<a href="nhsl/index.html">
<em>A New Handbook of Syriac Literature</em>
</a> is a multi-volume reference guide to Syriac literature from antiquity to the modern period. The first volume has been published and several more are in process. This resources is intended to serve as a title authority file for use in cataloguing Syriac manuscripts.
<ul>
<li>
<a href="bhse/index.html">
<em>Volume 1: Bibliotheca Hagiographica Syriaca Electronica</em>
</a> (Jeanne-Nicole Mellon Saint-Laurent, David A. Michelson, Ugo Zanetti and Claude Detienne, eds.) is a database of Syriac hagiographic literature covering not only saints indigenous to the Syriac traditions but also hagiographic literature and cults appropriated by the Syriac churches from Greek and other traditions.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>
<a href="saints/index.html">
<em>Gateway to the Syriac Saints</em>
</a> (Jeanne-Nicole Mellon Saint-Laurent, general editor) uses linked open data architecture to <em>Qadishe: A Guide to the Syriac Saints</em> and <em>Bibliotheca Hagiographica Syriaca Electronica</em> into a joint resource specifically for the study of Syriac saints. At present this resource links data throughed a system of shared <a href="documentation/terms.html">URIs</a>. An RDF instance is also in preparation.</li>
<li>
<a href="bibl/index.html">
<em>Syriaca.org Works Cited</em>
</a> is a shared feference list of modern scholarship cited in all Syriaca.org publications.
</li>
</ul>
<p>The following publications are in preparation:</p>
<ul>
<li>
<a href="spear/index.html">
<em>SPEAR: Syriac Persons Events and Relations</em>
</a> (Daniel L. Schwartz, general editor) is a
factoid-based prosopographical tool that is currently in preparation.</li>
<li>
<a href="mss/index.html">
<em>Digital Catalogue of Syriac Manuscripts in the British Library</em>
</a> (David A. Michelson, general editor) is a digital catalogue of Syriac manuscripts that is currently in preparation.</li>
<li>
<em>A Union Catalogue of Syriac Manuscripts</em> (David A. Michelson, general editor) is digital
union catalogue of Syriac manuscripts following the technical model of the <a href="http://www.fihrist.org.uk/">
<em>Fihrist</em>
</a> union catalogue. It is currently in preparation.</li>
</ul>
<p>All publications of <em>Syriaca.org</em> are made available online in a free and open format using the <a href="http://creativecommons.org">Creative Commons</a> licenses.</p>
<p>Prepublication draft data for all in-process publications is currently available in a <a href="https://github.com/srophe">public Github repository</a>.</p>
<p>For the completed publications listed above, we invite collaborative augmentation and annotation by scholars. Please <a href="contact-us.html">contact the editors</a> to submit revisions and additions. These reference works are designed to increase their coverage over time.</p>
<h2>What are the Objectives of Syriaca.or?</h2>
<p>The Syriac Reference Portal project was conceived to produce tools and reference resources that will overcome some of the access and discovery problems which currently impede scholarly research on Syriac language, cultures, and history. The principle objectives are threefold:</p>
<ul>
<li>to compile and organize core data related to the study of Syriac sources</li>
<li>to create digital tools for widely disseminating this data and facilitating further research</li>
<li>to create an online hub (cyberinfrastructure) to assist future research in the field of Syriac studies</li>
</ul>
<h2>Who are the indended users?</h2>
<p>The publications have been created to benefit a diverse group of users. For students and the interested public, we provide access to basic reference information about the historical, cultural, and religious diversity of the Middle East. For academics in general, we seek to generate new scholarly interest in Syriac sources by making research on Syriac accessible without the need for extensive linguistic facility in Syriac. Finally, by opening new levels of access to the sources through new discovery tools, the Syriac Reference Portal project not only supports the current research aims of specialists in the field, but even offers new ways of conceptualizing the historical evidence through digital approaches.</p>
<h2>Use Cases</h2>
<h3>User Scenario One: Researcher, Syriac Specialist</h3>
<p>A researcher working with an unpublished Syriac manuscript encounters a homiletic text attributed to a minor author she cannot identify. She consults the <a href="authors/index.html">
<em>A Guide to Syriac Authors</em>
</a> for an encyclopedia entry on the author that links to a listing of known works and citations for published works. Consulting these texts, she determines that her text has not previously been documented. Following the standards and protocols established for collaboration with Syriaca.org, the researcher submits information about the text and the manuscript citation to the Portal for inclusion in <a href="nhsl/index.html">
<em>A New Handbook of Syriac Literature</em>
</a> and <em>A Union Catalogue of Syriac Manuscripts</em> (forthcoming). Later, another researcher who has come across a text with the same title but without attribution to an author consults <a href="nhsl/index.html">
<em>A New Handbook of Syriac Literature</em>
</a> for text titles (or incipits) and discovers that the text’s author has been identified through another manuscript. This second scholar then submits his manuscript citation to the evidence field in the entry for that author.</p>
<h3>User Scenario Two: Researcher, Non-Specialist</h3>
<p>An historian of philosophy working on an Islamic philosophical text comes across a reference to Aristotle’s <em>Analytica Priora</em> in its Arabic translation. A search on Google Scholar pulls up a reference from Syriaca.org to the same work in Syriac. The researcher then consults <em>A New Handbook of Syriac Literature</em> for a list of the works of Aristotle extant in Syriac. By using the classified bibliography, the researcher learns of Syriac commentaries on the <em>Analytica</em> and is able to incorporate them into his study. Following suggestions generated by the semantic links in the Portal’s bibliography, he also discovers an unpublished master’s thesis on Syriac translation technique which provides an explanation of some terminological issues he has found confusing about the text.</p>
<!--<h3>User Scenario Three: Researcher, Non-Specialist</h3>
<p>A scholar in religious studies is interested in the varying interpretations in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam of the biblical passage concerning the “binding of Isaac” in Genesis 22:1-24. Her search on the ATLA Religion database provides a link to an article from <em>Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies</em> on the Syriac poetic commentary traditions in which Syriac authors expanded on the biblical narrative to speculate about Sarah’s attitudes toward the planned sacrifice of her son. A google search for this <em>Hugoye</em> article is dynamically integrated with the bibliography and cross-referencing scheme of the Portal, the researcher is them able to discover more recent publications on the same Syriac poetry. At the same time, she follows the suggested cross-references to explore the relationship of Syriac commentary on the binding of Isaac to different interpretative traditions in medieval Judaism and Islam. The researcher eventually publishes an article comparing these traditions and submits a copy to her institution’s open access repository with Syriac as a keyword in the metadata. An automated harvester for the Syriac Reference Portal finds this keyword and sends a notice of her article to the bibliography editors who accept the citation for inclusion in the Syriac Reference Portal.</p> -->
<h3>User Scenario Three: Educational and Public Users</h3>
<p>A teacher in an introductory college course on the history of the Middle East wants students to do an independent study project that will challenge assumptions about the cultural divide between Middle Eastern and European civilizations. The teacher assigns students to use the online resources of Syriaca.org including the <a href="bibl/index.html">
<em>Syriaca.org Works Cited</em>
</a> page to find documents in English translation from Syriac authors. Links between the <a href="geo/index.html">
<em>The Syriac Gazetteer</em>
</a> and the <a href="bibl/index.html">
<em>Syriaca.org Works Cited</em>
</a> allow the students to place their reading in a geographical context. Links between <a href="geo/index.html">
<em>The Syriac Gazetteer</em>
</a> and other ancient world geographic resources such as <a href="http://pleiades.stoa.org/">
<em>The Pleiades Online Gazetteer</em>
</a> allow the students to trace these geographic connections broadly.
</p>
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