eReviews

Oxford University, www.oxfordonline.com/online/biblical

Updated every six months, the newly launched Oxford Biblical Studies Online (OBSO) contains the Access Study Bible with Apocrypha, the Authorized King James Bible with Apocrypha, the Catholic Study Bible (2d ed.), the Jewish Study Bible, the New Oxford Annotated Bible (3d ed.), and the Oxford Study Bible, as well as Oxford Bible Commentary, Oxford Companion to the Bible, Oxford Handbook of Biblical Studies, Oxford History of the Biblical World, Oxford Dictionary of the Bible, Oxford Encyclopedia of Archeology in the Near East, Encyclopedia of Dead Sea Scrolls, The Apocryphal Old Testament, The Apocryphal New Testament, and How To Read the Bible. It also comprises about 5000 scholarly articles, including content from Oxford's forthcoming Encyclopaedia of the Bible (2011–12), interactive time lines, maps, illustrations, and a bibliography.

HOW DOES IT WORK? The opening screen presents a combination of practical tool links at the top and fuller content notes and related links beneath. At screen top left is a simple search box; below that is the workmanlike toolbar with drop-down menu links to Search, Browse, Bible Texts, Timelines, Tools & Resources, and, at far right, Bible Verse Lookup. Below the toolbar is a welcome from the editor in chief, a large box devoted to Focus On, a What's Inside section, and a What's New sector. It's a very attractive, well-organized screen, with plenty of information but no overcrowding.

CAN YOU USE IT? Let me say up front that I am no Bible scholar, so mine is a nonspecialist perspective. That said, as I made my way through the file, it quickly became apparent that it is chock-full of content that has been made accessible in a variety of ways that will be very conducive to effective Bible research.

I need to explain more of what each drop-down menu offers before going further. Search offers Main Search, Advanced Bible Search, Image & Map Search, and Bibliography Search. Browse lets you Browse everything (All), Reference, Bible Texts, and Images and Maps. Bible Texts takes you directly to the full text of the six different Bibles, the Apocryphal Old Testament, the Apocryphal New Testament, the Oxford Bible Commentary, the Concise Concordance to the NRSV, and the NAB Concise Concordance.

The Timeline menu links to All time lines, Biblical World, and Biblical Rulers time lines. Tools and References takes you to the A-to-Z list of Bible books, a Calendar, Weights and Measures (for the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament), a hyperlinked Lectionary (that takes you directly to the referenced readings), the Focus On essays, a Further Reading hyperlinked Bibliography, and a series of Internet Resources in the subject areas of Archaeology, Biblical Geography, History and History of Interpretation, Culture and Society, Science and Medicine, Biblical and Other Texts, and Biblical Studies.

Then there is the Bible Verse Lookup, for which you select one of the Bibles from one menu, then select a book, then enter a chapter number and verse number. It took me about two and a half seconds to locate the book of Esther, Chapter 1, Verse 2: the Lookup system immediately linked me into the full text.

Rather than Search or Browse, I began with a click on the Bible Texts menu, and chose to look at the King James Bible. That brought up a screen with an outline of the Bible at screen left and the text at screen right. The detailed outline had live links leading me through the Bible from the Preface and Acknowledgements (so all the print version's content is here) to Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, so I could link to any book or chapter with ease.

At screen right, as text displayed, I could immediately link to the Previous or Next chapter, Jump to another book, chapter, and/or verse, or opt to compare it with another text or commentary (if one chooses the latter option, the screen changes so the text of the original Bible under consideration is at screen left, while at screen right you are prompted to "select a source from the drop-down list above to view additional bible text and commentary").

I chose to compare the King James with the New Oxford Annotated Bible, and the text of the latter popped up on screen. Verses were clearly marked on both texts, and the Jump to option persisted at screen top. Above the Jump to option was a toolbar that included a Look It Up button, with a hyperlinked explanation that if you highlight any word or phrase and click this button it will search for the word or phrase for you immediately. I could also have opted to view the text of either Bible alone by clicking a View Alone button at text top.

The system lets you print, email, and cite sources with ease, and you can export material directly to EndNote, ProCite, ReferenceManager, and RefWorks. And right on the home page, there is a link to the Resources for Librarians page, which includes a link to the Guided Tour of OBSO. I have only one persnickety cavil: when I go into a particular section of a Bible under Bible Texts and want to return to the full outline, clicking on the Bible's title does not take me back into the full outline—it becomes inactive. I'd like that link to be active.

WHAT'S THE COST? Oxford is offering two distinct pricing models for OBSO: subscription or perpetual-access purchasing. Perpetual access includes ownership of the majority of the content on the site, with an annual-platform and maintenance fee that includes all content and technology upgrades.

Subscriptions will be available on an unlimited or concurrent user basis. Annual-subscription pricing starts at $1650 and concurrent-user pricing at $895. Perpetual-access pricing begins at $8250.

HOW GOOD IS IT? I have truly just scratched the surface of this mammoth work of scholarship—to do it justice would take reams of paper or gigabytes of e-space. For Bible scholars, this will be a tremendously useful resource, and Oxford breaks the one-to-ten rating scale once again: this file is an astonishing 11.

BOTTOM LINE Most highly recommended for academic, public, school, and special libraries serving serious Bible researchers.