Resources for Syriac Studies -
'An annotated collection of free and open source books, journals, and more related to the study of Syriac.'http://doaks.org/research/byzantine/resources/syriacSee also this blog post by Scott Johnson who maintains the site along with Jack Tannous:
'If it's not online and free, then it's not published'
http://scottfjohnson.com/blog/2012/9/3/if-its-not-online-and-free-then-its-not-published.html[...]
When my colleague Jack Tannous (now of Princeton) and I conceived it, we intentionally left out references and links to any published material still in copyright. This was deliberate, first, to show what a wealth of Syriac material is available for free on sites like Google Books and Archive.org (along with BYU’s CPART, Hathi Trust, and other repositories). All this material lacked was proper organization: as Grafton has pointed out elsewhere in the New Yorker, finding specific editions on Google Books can be a real chore.
Second, we intend for the site to be a provocation to those who would seek to limit the distribution of scholarly materials in order to increase their own financial gain. In other words, the more the site becomes canonical (which depends, of course, on us making it really comprehensive and useful), the more people will wonder why X or Y book is not linked on the site, and the demand that X or Y be made available for free will hopefully grow. In fact, we’ve already received requests for certain expensive reference books to be referenced or linked (in their online form, behind a pay-wall). However, this would defeat our purpose. Not only do we recognize that it is now a de facto truth that, “If It’s Not Online and Free, Then It’s Not Published,” we also prescriptively want to drive that message home to scholars, universities, and publishers alike, so that eventually the de facto truth may become de jure as well. To quote Avatars of the Word once again:
The most effective change is wielded by those who do not expect to create or manipulate a closed system, but instead recognize that effective change takes place in open systems, where the accumulation of collaborative actions generates unexpected harmony. (88)
Eventually, perhaps, our site will be linked in major library catalogues as a “real” online resource, and certainly the Dumbarton Oaks domain name will help with that case. But in the meantime, we hope to help solidify (for Syriac at least) the reputation and status of born-digital scholarly works as important contributions to the Humanities—in fact, as necessary contributions, if the Humanities is going to move forward apace with the expectations of our students, readers, and colleagues in other disciplines.
Let me offer a few more thoughts in conclusion. First, this year’s college freshman were born in 1993/1994, the first year the internet saw massive adoption. Older scholars, like O’Donnell, Grafton, even Jack Tannous and myself, were trained in a world of books. The longer we were trained in that world, the more attached we are, by nature, to books. Students from today forward will not be able to remember a world without Google. Younger students and rising scholars are simply growing up with different cognitive assumptions. At some point it becomes a barrier to their education to insist that their mode of training be the same as ours. Second, our Syriac site is a testimony to the power of the internet for scholarly research. You can find in a few clicks Syriac passages which would take at least 15 to 30 minutes to locate in physical books in the best eastern Christian research libraries in the world. There’s a speed benefit: why would you not want to work more efficiently if you could? Third, the site is an embodiment of the cliché that information longs to be free. Your access to Syriac texts should not be a function of having attended Harvard, Princeton, Oxford, etc. Credentials do not equal access. You should be able to read this material if you’re in Houston, Atlanta, Cairo, Damascus, Tehran, or anywhere in between. At our most rhetorical, we are trying to repatriate texts and manuscripts taken out of the Middle East (often long ago and under a dark cloud) back into the Middle East: we are consciously liberationists as much as we are curators. The internet can, to some degree, allow these Syriac Elgin Marbles to go home, to the people whose ancestors wrote these texts. It is hard to imagine why any barriers to this scenario, where the entire world benefits on the back of the internet, would be allowed to remain in place.
Partial quote above but it's worth reading in full, and considering the parallels with this thread.
Topic: Qur'anic studies today