BethMardutho.org: An Electronic Resource for Syriac Studies

This paper presents the content and electronic projects of www.bethmardutho.org, the official web site of The Syriac Institute (formerly The Syriac Computing Institute). Since 1992, the Institute, through its web site, has been the focus of Syriac Studies on the Internet. The paper will touch upon various projects of the Institute, but will concentrate on two electronic resources: 1) Hugoye: Journal of Syriac studies, the Institute's peer-reviewed eJournal which is freely available, and 2) eBethArké: The Syriac Digital Library Project, which aims at digitizing ca. 3,000 holdings from various university libraries and making the material available as an eLibrary over the Internet.

Regarding the Hugoye journal, the paper will discuss the challenges that we have been faced with and the solutions we have using, including issues related to encoding (especially of foreign languages), the source language (HTML vs. XML), presentation issues (e.g., user-friendly footnotes with back-links), and the quality of an eJournal vs. a printed journal.

Regarding the eBethArké project, the paper presents a model for an eLibrary which can be used for other disciplines in ancient studies. An account of the architecture behind the technical aspects of the project will be given, along with the current status of the project.

For more info on this site, please visit www.bethmardutho.org.