Comparing Open Scriptures and the Digital Bible Library (DBL)

[SeanB]

I recently learned about the Digital Bible Library initiative (you can read more about it in this article from Outreach Magazine). This ambitious effort to provide a standardized repository for digital Bible texts is backed by several major Bible societies as well as a prominent philanthropist, Mark Green. I'd be interested to know how people see the goals of the Open Scriptures group relative to this new endeavor.

Sean Boisen

[Russell Allen]

I can't speak for the Open Scriptures project, only for myself.

That's a pretty buzzword heavy article. I'm not 100% sure what actually the Digital Bible LIbrary Initiative is.

Going from the last paragraph: 

"Through The Digital Bible Library, digitized Scripture becomes accessible to qualified ministries for sharing God's Word with communities and individuals in a language and format that they can engage with, so their lives may be transformed. Every Tribe Every Nation ministry "cardholders" (such as YouVersion and BibleSearch) deliver translations via apps, websites, and print on demand. The Word goes right where it's needed—all while protecting intellectual property rights."

Generally all distributions of scripture are welcome, so good luck to them! However it doesn't sound like the sort of organic, community driven open source/open content project I personally am interested in.  I am interested in projects which aim for digitized Scripture being accessible to everyone, not only 'qualified ministries' (whatever they are). Also for a recognition that reading preprepared text is only one way individuals and communities engage with the text of the Bible.  

Russell

openenglishbible.org

On 03/01/2013, at 9:58 AM, SeanB <sean....@gmail.com> wrote:

I recently learned about the Digital Bible Library initiative (you can read more about it in this article from Outreach Magazine). This ambitious effort to provide a standardized repository for digital Bible texts is backed by several major Bible societies as well as a prominent philanthropist, Mark Green. I'd be interested to know how people see the goals of the Open Scriptures group relative to this new endeavor.

Sean Boisen

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[David Troidl]

Hi Sean,

From the thrust of the article, this would seem to be far more of interest to the SWORD Project (www.crosswire.org).  They are moving in much the same direction, without all the big name support.  My take on OpenScriptures is that we are not so much trying to offer the Bible as such, but rather the contents of the Bible, linked digitally to as many open resources as possible.  This includes not only various translations, but original language texts, lexica and morphological analysis.

There are many Bibles available on the internet.  Even the BHS is freely published online, for example, but without the apparatus.  The Bible text is great, and the world would be a sinkhole without it.  There are, however, masses of people who want the capability to dig deeper.  Even secular bookstores sell Strong's concordance.  This is more of what I see as the foundation of OpenScriptures.

Peace,

David

On 1/2/2013 5:58 PM, SeanB wrote:

I recently learned about the Digital Bible Library initiative (you can read more about it in this article from Outreach Magazine). This ambitious effort to provide a standardized repository for digital Bible texts is backed by several major Bible societies as well as a prominent philanthropist, Mark Green. I'd be interested to know how people see the goals of the Open Scriptures group relative to this new endeavor.

Sean Boisen

[Kahunapule Michael Johnson]

The Digital Bible Library is sort of a compromise between people interested in maximizing ministry and people maximizing profits from Bible sales. Sponsors pay publishers for the ability to freely distribute their Bible translations with certain limits. For example, until the 21st of January only, you can download the NIV on YouVersion for offline reading. Getting direct access to the Digital Bible Library is extremely difficult except for a chosen few. Its main effect is through the chosen few, i. e. YouVersion, FCBH, and BibleSearch (Bibles.org). They are doing a lot of good, and I pray that God will bless them. I intend to keep helping them where I can.

OpenScriptures, as I see it, is more about OPEN access to freely redistributable Scriptures, like the 238 freely redistributable translations I host on http://PNGScriptures.org, http://VanuatuBibles.org, http://PacificBibles.org, http://eBible.org, etc. If you would like access to my library of source files for those, it is at ftp://eBible.org/pub/Scriptures/. That is open. Quality contributions are welcome.

Aloha,
Michael
http://MLJohnson.org

[Weston Ruter]

This is the first I've heard about the Every Tribe Every Nation (ETEN) alliance and the Digital Bible Library (DBL). Thank you Sean for sharing that article to introduce it!

It is very exciting that major players are working together to collaborate on such a massive undertaking. Indeed there are aims that Open Scriptures shares with the DBL, especially looking over their Look Inside page which lists the “common digital format” and their Vision page:

To bring these Scriptures to a connected world, this vast collection of translations must be converted to a digital format. ETEN is pushing forward with Scripture digitization of completed and yet-to-be-finished translations in a quality-controlled, uniform manner. We're eliminating the confusion of so many formats by unifying the work, and in the process, creating the engine for standardized and trusted content.

One of our goals has been to come up with a web API specification (standard) that can be used to implement web services to provide access to scriptural data. This looks like what DBL is specifically going to be. The difference I think is that they intend to be the sole server for this web service, whereas we envision that each Bible society and any independent mirrors would have an instance of the web service to provide access to their own data, with all instances working together in a network. So I think the major difference between this aspect of Open Scriptures and DBL is that the DBL takes a centralized top-down approach (“a central hub for Bible texts”) to what we would like to be decentralized and bottom-up. 

But the API specification is just one interest area in the Open Scriptures community. I agree with what Russell said in that we're more of an organic, community driven open source/open content project which seeks to make data available to everyone, not just those who are library cardholders, as Kahunapule mentioned. Open Scriptures is first and foremost a community of people who come around the shared vision of free (libre) scriptural data.

So I also agree with what David said, “we are not so much trying to offer the Bible as such, but rather the contents of the Bible, linked digitally to as many open resources as possible”. Thus I think Linked Data is another key difference between our focus and that of DBL. It is very good that the DBL is assembling all of these Biblical texts into a common repository, but from reading their site it does not seem that they are going to be working on connecting these texts together, or that there would also be meta-textual information also made available (like lexica and morphological analysis).

I expect and hope that the DBL will be successful given the funding and support that ETEN has. I too want to support them. As an aside, I wonder what we in our community could likewise accomplish if we had similar funding and support. Alas, it is hard to fund idealists who want to give stuff away I suppose :-)

On Wed, Jan 2, 2013 at 2:58 PM, SeanB <Sean....@gmail.com> wrote:

I recently learned about the Digital Bible Library initiative (you can read more about it in this article from Outreach Magazine). This ambitious effort to provide a standardized repository for digital Bible texts is backed by several major Bible societies as well as a prominent philanthropist, Mark Green. I'd be interested to know how people see the goals of the Open Scriptures group relative to this new endeavor.

Sean Boisen

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[Weston Ruter]

Also, do we know what specifically the DBL's “common digital format” is? Is it OSIS 2.1.1 or some derivation?

[Chris Little]

On 1/15/2013 10:27 PM, Weston Ruter wrote:
> Also, do we know what specifically the DBL's �common digital format� is?

> Is it OSIS 2.1.1 or some derivation?

My money would be on USX.

The copy on a 'common digital format' does have an OSIS-y ring,
especially since I wouldn't pick USX if I were looking for a format to
accommodate overlapping structures. But given the players, they're
almost certainly using USX.

--Chris

[Kahunapule Michael Johnson]

Chris is right. The format is USX, but in a .zip file with additional metadata. Essentially, it is a Paratext Bible translation project in USX form. See http://www.crosswire.org/wiki/File_Formats#USX for more about USX. I have an example DBL bundle. It could use some better documentation, but it works. It includes a Bible translation and its metadata in a standard, common format.

USX is an evolving standard that is tracking USFM, which is changing slowly in lock-step with its reference implementation, Paratext. Paratext and USFM/USX is being enhanced to improve its ability to overlap certain structures. For example, it will (unlike now) allow markup for added/supplied text (italics in the KJV) inside markup for direct quotes of Jesus (often rendered in red). That example is the only overlapping structure that USX has failed to handle in the 274 Scripture projects that I have worked with, so far, and it will be fixed. I can't think of any other valid objections to USX as a standard, common Scripture interchange format except that it could be better documented.

Yes, it means I will need to write some more software to handle USX, but I believe that I can do that relatively pain-free.

No, it is not one of the earlier attempts to become THE Bible file format, like OXES, OSIS, XSEM, or USFM; but that is OK. If you still want to use one of the other formats, like OSIS, you can just implement a converter. (Chances are good that in the process of that implementation, you will discover why I generate "Modified" OSIS if you attempt to cover all possible tags.)

Currently existing converters include:

USFM can be converted to USX and vice versa with Paratext (which is unfortunately, not fully free).

USFM or USFX can be converted to USFX, USFM, and modified OSIS with Haiola (which is free and open source). I plan to make Haiola import and export USX, too, when I get time to implement that.

There are a couple of older converters from USFM to OSIS that cover a smaller subset of the possible tags, too.

Thus, if you have already invested heavily in OSIS (i. e. with the Sword Project), there is a path from the over 700 Bible translations (including Bible portions) in the Digital Bible Library to your format if you can get access.

In the mean time, I have started a sort of informal Digital Public Bible Library of only redistributable Bible translations in a variety of formats (currently USFM, USFX, and MOSIS) at ftp:/pub/Scriptures/. By "redistributable", I mean Public Domain or licensed under a Creative Commons license. Terms are in each .zip file, most of which prohibit commercial distribution and changing of the text or punctuation.

MOSIS is Modified OSIS, which validates against the OSIS schema and should be suitable for import to Sword (something I still aim to prove when I get time to test it), but isn't in 100% compliance with the philosophy and letter of the OSIS User Manual.

I believe that it is in our best interest in the Body of Christ to seek unity and interoperability as much as practical between truly open initiatives, like OpenScriptures, and central publisher model initiatives like the DBL.

Full disclosure: I prefer more open distribution of Scriptures, as I wrote in http://mpj.cx/?p=277 but as Jesus said, those who aren't against Him are for Him, so may the Lord bless the DBL project.

On 01/15/2013 11:13 PM, Chris Little wrote:

On 1/15/2013 10:27 PM, Weston Ruter wrote:

Also, do we know what specifically the DBL's “common digital format” is?

Is it OSIS 2.1.1 or some derivation?

[Kahunapule Michael Johnson]

The DBL's "common digital format" is USX, with some additional XML metadata. See http://www.crosswire.org/wiki/File_Formats#USX for more information.

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Aloha,
Kahunapule Michael Johnson

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