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Date:         Wed, 6 Jan 1993 07:51:21 CDT
From:         MICHAEL STRANGELOVE <441495@ACADVM1.UOTTAWA.CA>
Subject:      CONTENTS Project Overview for 1993

----------------------------Original message----------------------------

Welcome to 1993 and the beginning of the second issue of the
Religious Studies Publications Journal - CONTENTS, also known as the
CONTENTS Project. The following is a project overview that describes
the what this electronic journal/archive strives to achieve. It will
be posted to CONTENTS periodically for the benefit of new
subscribers. Take note of a number of changes in the CONTENTS
Project as we begin to shift in focus from a table of contents
serial to a network publication and information service for online
religious studies scholars.

In 1993 the project archived thirteen new bibliographies (over 450
pages of material), eleven new reviews, the first complete M.A.
thesis accessible on the Net (look forward to at least three more
shortly), a new e-mail phone book for the discipline and quite a few
journal and book table of contents.

1993 sees the end of journal reviews, for lack of funding (we will
consider unsolicited reviews of any material or relevant software).
I would like to find someone willing to take over managing book
reviews (preferably within Ontario, so as to avoid postage fees),
let me know if this is of interest to you.

Henry Leyenhorst is overseeing table of content publication and we
will soon have a separate LISTSERV list running for this purpose.

Funding from the American Academy of Religion has enabled the
project to expand its FTP archive to 500 megabytes. 1993 will also
see the creation of a gopher server for full text reading of the
project's archive, as well as _The Electric Mystic's Guide to the
Internet_.

The _Mystic's Guide_ has now reached two hundred pages and is
undergoing final editing and "beta-testing" prior to publication
later this year by Scholars Press (our thanks to Harry Gilmore for
his interest in supporting this project, and to Ann Okerson for
encouraging me to show the Guide to SP).

Throughout the course of this Winter semester I will be
disseminating "bite-size" updated sections of the _Mystic's Guide_
to CONTENTS subscribers. These will be given the SUBJECT name: EMG:
<section title> UPDATE for easy identification. Later this semester
I hope to make a complete revised edition available via FTP and
LISTSERV.

Your comments and suggestions have been greatly appreciated and I
look forward to continued feedback from our subscribers throughout
1993.

Best Wishes,

Michael Strangelove
CONTENTS Project Director
University of Ottawa
441495@UOTTAWA
441495@ACADVM1.UOTTAWA.CA

__________________________________________________________________

                        PROJECT OVERVIEW
__________________________________________________________________


Religious Studies Publications Journal - CONTENTS

ISSN: 1188-5734

An all electronic, network distributed serial for Religious Studies

Purpose:

      To disseminate via the global computer networks: thesis
      and dissertations, subject bibliographies, glossaries,
      course syllabi and other research material such as
      prepublication papers and dissertation abstracts.

Goal:

      To provide a comprehensive network distributed source of
      information on Religious Studies pedagogical and
      research resources, while at the same time provide a
      freely accessible network archive for primary and
      secondary electronic texts, resources, and software of
      interest to the discipline.

Overview:

      The Religious Studies Publications Journal - CONTENTS,
      subtitled the CONTENTS Project, is a networked
      electronic journal that provides an information service
      to the thousands of scholars in Religious Studies and
      related fields who are online with BITNET, Internet, and
      other international computer networks. CONTENTS' primary
      function is the archiving of any research or pedagogical
      material of value to the academic community. This
      includes items such as works in progress, conference
      papers, complete theses and dissertations,
      bibliographies, networked documents and audio-visual
      resources of relevance to Religious Studies. In 1992,
      the project archived over four hundred pages of
      bibliographies, as well as a complete M.A. theses. The
      project is also publishing journal table of contents on
      an experimental basis.

      The availability of new archived material is announced
      to subscribers, who may then retrieve the electronic
      texts via LISTSERV or FTP. Subscribers also receive
      updates of The Electric Mystic's Guide. In mid 1993, the
      CONTENTS Project will provide the Internet community
      with a gopher server that contains a complete copy of
      the guide as well as online browsing of many papers,
      reviews, bibliographies, and even an e-mail address
      book.

Lists in Review

      A supplement to CONTENTS, Lists in Review, provides an
      overview of many of the LISTSERV lists (online academic
      conferences) of relevance to Religious Studies. A team
      of editors surveys individual lists and records lists of
      subject keywords that will serve to indicate what has
      been discussed on any given online conference. These
      list summaries are compiled by the supplement editor and
      posted as a short file to CONTENTS and archived on a
      fileserver. This collection will allow networked
      researchers to quickly survey what has been discussed on
      dozens of lists and then retrieve past conversations
      from a list's logbook.

REVIEW-L

      REVIEW-L is a supplemental list to the CONTENTS Project
      that disseminates new reviews of books in Religious
      Studies.

At present, the Religious Studies Publications Journal - CONTENTS,
has over seven hundred subscribers in more than twenty seven
countries.


The CONTENTS Project team consists of:

Michael Strangelove                L. Gregory Bloomquist
Project Director                   Associate Director
University of Ottawa               Saint Paul University

Michael T. Bradley
Lists in Review Supplement         Reinhard Pummer
Managing Editor                    Publications Review Editor
Columbia University                University of Ottawa

Carl Briggs                        Merrill Cook
Publicity Manager                  Ecunet Liaison
Alderson-Broaddus College          Interconnect Director, Ecunet

Henry Leyenhorst
Table of Contents Suppliment
Managing Editor
University of Ottawa


To Subscribe:

The CONTENTS Project:

      Announces new reviews, bibliographies, glossaries,
      dissertations and dissertation abstracts, prepublication
      papers and other research and pedagogical material that
      is archived on the CONTENTS Project LISTSERV and FTP
      fileservers. This is not a conversational list.

      To subscribe to the Religious Studies Publication
      Journal - CONTENTS, send the following e-mail command
      SUBSCRIBE CONTENTS your name to LISTSERV@UOTTAWA or
      LISTSERV@ACADVM1.UOTTAWA.CA

The CONTENTS Project Full Text Review:

      If you wish to automatically receive the full text of
      reviews published by the CONTENTS Project, you must
      subscribe to REVIEW-L. To do so, send the following
      e-mail command: SUBSCRIBE REVIEW-L your name to
      LISTSERV@UOTTAWA or LISTSERV@ACADVM1.UOTTAWA.CA

      To determine the status of your subscription to
      CONTENTS, send the following e-mail message to the above
      address: QUERY CONTENTS

      To determine the status of your subscription to
      REVIEW-L, send the following e-mail message to the above
      address: QUERY REVIEW-L

      Contact the project director at 441495@UOTTAWA or
      441495@ACADVM1.UOTTAWA.CA if you experience difficulty
      subscribing.

Back Issues:

      To retrieve previous postings to the Religious Studies
      Publications Journal - CONTENTS, send an e-mail message
      to LISTSERV@UOTTAWA or LISTSERV@ACADVM1.UOTTAWA.CA,
      containing the GET file name command based on the names
      of monthly logbooks:

            GET CONTENTS LOG9201
            GET CONTENTS LOG9202
            GET CONTENTS LOG9203
            GET CONTENTS LOG9204
            GET CONTENTS LOG9205
            and so on ....

      To get a list of individual Religious Studies related
      bibliographies, reviews, articles, glossaries, and other
      files archived on the CONTENTS Project's LISTSERV
      archive, send the e-mail message below to
      LISTSERV@UOTTAWA or LISTSERV@ACADVM1.UOTTAWA.CA

      GET CONTENTS FILELIST

      Access to these logbooks and archived files is not
      restricted to CONTENTS' subscribers.  These logbooks can
      be searched via LDBASE (see Volume One).

FTP Archive

      The FTP document archive of the Religious Studies
      Publications Journal - CONTENTS is accessed at
      PANDA1.UOTTAWA.CA (137.122.6.16) in the /pub/religion/
      directory.

Contact:

      Michael Strangelove                 441495@UOTTAWA
      Department of Religious Studies     441495@ACADVM1.UOTTAWA.CA
      University of Ottawa                FAX:   (613) 564-6641
      177 Waller, Ottawa, Ontario         Voice: (613) 564-2300
      CANADA K1N 6N5

______________________________________________________________

The CONTENTS Project is fortunate (and grateful) to have the
following Board of Advisors:

Ann Okerson
     Director, Association of Research Libraries
     Office of Scientific and Academic Publishing
Sandra Woolfrey
     Director, Wilfrid Laurier University Press
Michael Neuman
     Director, Center for Text and Technology
     Georgetown University
Larry Hurtado
     Director, Institute for the Humanities
     University of Manitoba
Philip Davies
     Director, Sheffield Academic Press
     Department of Biblical Studies, University of Sheffield
Willard McCarty
     Assistant Director, Centre for Computing in the Humanities
     University of Toronto
Robert Kraft
     University of Pennsylvania
James O'Donnell
     University of Pennsylvania
Peter Scott
     University of Saskatchewan
Jean-Claude Guedon
     University of Montreal
David J. Reimer
     Wilfrid Laurier University
Gord Nickerson
     University of Western Ontario
Jim Marchand
     University of Illinois
William Adler
     North Carolina State University
Robin Cover and Raymond Harder
    Co-Chairs, Computer Assisted Research Group
    Society of Biblical Literature
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