Wednesday, March 20, 2019

Syriaca.org: The Syriac Reference Portal

[First posted in AWOL  26 March 2014, updated 20 March 2019]

Syriaca.org: The Syriac Reference Portal
The publications of Syriaca.org combine emerging methods in the field of digital humanities with the rigour of traditional scholarship in history and philology. Four digital reference works have been published and more are in preparation:
  • The Syriac Gazetteer (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.
  • The Syriac Biographical Dictionary (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.
    • Volume 1: Qadishe: A Guide to the Syriac Saints (Jeanne-Nicole Mellon Saint-Laurent and David A. Michelson, eds.) is a digital catalogue of saints venerated in the Syriac tradition.
    • Volume 2: A Guide to Syriac Authors (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.
    • Volume 3: Miscellaneous Syriac Persons (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.
    • Volume 4: Anonymous Syriac Persons (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.
    • [Notabene: At present, volumes 3 and 4 are accessible directly through the main SBD search page]. 
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  • A New Handbook of Syriac Literature 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.
    • Volume 1: Bibliotheca Hagiographica Syriaca Electronica (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.
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  • Gateway to the Syriac Saints (Jeanne-Nicole Mellon Saint-Laurent, general editor) uses linked open data architecture to Qadishe: A Guide to the Syriac Saints and Bibliotheca Hagiographica Syriaca Electronica into a joint resource specifically for the study of Syriac saints. At present this resource links data throughed a system of shared URIs. An RDF instance is also in preparation.
  • Syriaca.org Works Cited is a shared feference list of modern scholarship cited in all Syriaca.org publications.
The following publications are in preparation:
All publications of Syriaca.org are made available online in a free and open format using the Creative Commons licenses.

Prepublication draft data for all in-process publications is currently available in a public Github repository.

For the completed publications listed above, we invite collaborative augmentation and annotation by scholars. Please contact the editors to submit revisions and additions. These reference works are designed to increase their coverage over time.

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