[B-Greek] Searching the B-Greek archives
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad2 at mac.com
Wed Dec 9 07:50:54 EST 2009
On Wednesday, December 09, 2009, at 06:17AM, "Tony Pope" <borikayaama_tekiri at sil.org> wrote:
>(Sorry to old timers if this has all been said before. Dr Conrad says "the archives can be
>consulted", and indeed on the FAQ page there is mention of a powerful search engine. But I cannot
>see where to access it. Doubtless I'm missing something quite obvious, but if someone would be
>sufficient of a FILOS to point it out, I should be grateful. :)
The FAQ does need to be updated in that regard and a couple others as well. The best solution for searching the archives, to my knowledge, was provided by Joe Weaks in a "bookmarklet" that can be dragged into the bookmark bar of Firefox browser; it is described and may be accessed at:
http://macbiblioblog.blogspot.com/2008/03/b-greek-search-bookmarklet.html
You can also use the following in a Google search box:
<search-term> site:http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/b-greek/
There is also the matter of formulating the query so as to bring the most useful results. I would note that, although you can search for scripture citations (e.g. Matthew 6:34), there's such variety of citation modes (Mt 6:34, Mt. 6:34, Mt 6.34, Mt. 6.34, Matt. 6:34, ..., Matthew 6:34 ...) that no particular mode chosen is likely to hit on every item in the archives that deals with the text in question. I have found that a search that uses the standard B-Greek transliteration of a key word or phrase in the passage you're looking for makes a more serviceable search term for getting most of what's useful in the archives.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (ret)
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