It's that time of year again! This week the Accordance team will be converging on the cities of Milwaukee and Chicago for the annual meetings of the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS) and Society of Biblical Literature (SBL). While I'll be missing ETS for the first time in many years, I'll head to Chicago later this week to teach an Accordance training seminar and to help out at SBL.

If you'll be at those conferences or in those cities, there are several opportunities to meet Accordance staff and to learn from Accordance experts. Here's a rundown of where we'll be and what we'll be doing:

ETS Conference (Nov. 14-16): Look for us in Exhibit Hall B of the Frontier Airlines Center in Milwaukee. We'll be in booth #238.

Free Training Seminar in Chicago (Nov. 16): On Friday, while the rest of the team is breaking down the ETS booth and driving down to Chicago, I'll be teaching a seminar at Moody Bible Institute. If you're in the Chicago area and would like to attend, we'll be in room 319 of the Sweeting Building from 9 am to 5 pm. As with all our seminars, you're welcome to come and go as your schedule permits. To register for the seminar, e-mail us at seminars(at)accordancebible(dot)com. I hope to see you there.

SBL Conference (Nov. 17-20): You'll find us in Exhibit Hall F2 of the McCormick Place Convention Center’s West Building. We'll be in booth #539. As always, our booth is sure to be both large and extremely active.

Accordance Reception (Nov. 18): Want to come socialize with us in a more relaxed setting? We'll be hosting a reception in Suite 1879 of the Chicago Hilton from 7:30 to 9:30 pm on Sunday, November 18. Eager young students are finding that this is a great opportunity to network with top scholars—and just think how impressed they'll be that you're already using Accordance!

So there you have it. We have a busy week ahead of us, but it's always fun to put faces to names and help people get the most out of Accordance. If you can join us at any of these events, we look forward to seeing you!

Remember the old commercial for Life cereal? Two boys are sitting at the breakfast table discussing this new cereal their mom says is "good for them." Not sure what to make of that, they go back and forth urging each other to be the first to try it. Then they hit on a brilliant way forward. They'll give it to Mikey, their finicky little brother, and see if he likes it. When Mikey enthusiastically digs in, the two older boys want some too.

At the recent annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, I was talking with another member of the Accordance team when Christian Brady, a professor, long-time Accordance user, and author of the popular Targuman blog, came up to us and asked who would be the best person to interview for his new Sacred Techs podcast. My colleague and I looked at each other about like those two boys in the Life commercial: neither of us wanted the pressure of an impromptu interview, so we cast about for a suitable Mikey. Then it hit us: Darin! He's our new Director of Marketing—let's get him to do it.

Darin was just finishing a demo when we called him over, introduced him to Dr. Brady, and told him that Dr. Brady wanted to interview him. I don't think we managed to tell Darin that this was for a podcast, so I'm not sure he realized that he was about to be recorded live.

In spite of getting put on the spot like that, Darin handled the interview like a pro. I just got done listening to it, and the guy is downright smooth! You can listen to the Sacred Techs podcast, which also includes an interview with the guys from Olive Tree Bible Software, here. Be sure to check it out, and if you think Darin did well in a pinch, be sure to let him know in the comments on this post.

On every page of the Accordance web-site, you'll see the slogan "Designed for Mac. Trusted by Scholars. Right for You." As anyone who visited our booth at the recent annual meetings of the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS) and Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) can attest, our claim to be "Trusted by Scholars" is anything but marketing hype.

For years now, the Accordance booth at ETS and SBL has been a hotbed of activity. In fact, we now have other exhibitors telling us they request booth space near us because they know we'll draw traffic past their own booths. We always book a large open booth and pack it with demo stations. At SBL we had no less than eight demo stations and three sales stations, yet even that was sometimes not enough to accommodate everyone.

Why is the Accordance booth always so busy? I think it's because over the years the scholars who attend those conferences have come to trust us to provide them with cutting-edge features and resources found nowhere else. It's not uncommon to have an Accordance user drag a student or colleague into the booth and tell them, "You've got to see this." Neither is it uncommon to have someone sit down for a demo and say, "I've been following you guys for years, but I've finally got a Mac so I know I need to get Accordance." The scholars and students who enter our booth at ETS and SBL don't need to be convinced of their need for Accordance; they come knowing that Accordance will save them time, advance their research, and aid them in their teaching.

"Trusted by Scholars" is more than just a marketing slogan. It's a reputation for excellence among the users whose needs are the most difficult to satisfy. Judging from the activity at this year's ETS and SBL, that trust remains strong, and we're committed to keeping it so.

Yesterday David announced the release of version 8.4, and one of our newest features: export of bibliographic citations for tools. Today I'd like to describe this in more detail, and highlight some of its strengths.

As of today we support two citation styles: SBL and Turabian. SBL is the standard for most  in the Biblical studies field, but Turabian is widely used in colleges and seminaries. At this stage we felt that these two styles would meet the needs of the majority of our users. But, there's one problem: neither of them has a completely adequate citation type for our resources. While some of our resources are published on an individually licensed CD/DVD, many aren't. Although Turabian 7^th edition boasts greater support for electronic sources, many of them are tailored towards online databases and other Internet sources. Because of this ambiguity many people use our resources yet cite the print editions.

For this reason, we decided to develop a modified citation type, which treats our resources as electronic editions of their print counterparts. For SBL we consulted with a specialist in the field of Biblical studies technology, Danny Zacharias, faculty member at Acadia Divinity College, and creator of Deinde.org. Danny has extensive experience with bibliographic software (he has written a review of the leading Mac bibliographic manager, and developed its SBL format), and is actively involved in academic research as a Ph.D. student.

Our SBL citation style is based upon The SBL Handbook of Style For Ancient Near Eastern, Biblical, and Early Christian Studies. In addition, the Student Supplement for The SBL Handbook of Style (February 2009) was consulted. The SBL style is the most accurate and robust style for handling resources related to Biblical studies. For Turabian we consulted the latest handbook: A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, 7^th ed. We went to great lengths to make sure we were as accurate as possible for both of these styles; an advantage that we feel will be evident to those with a keen eye towards detail. Despite our best efforts, this feature is not perfect and you should always consult the handbook for the particular style you are using.

So, how does this great feature work? The first step is to go to your preferences, and select Bibliography.

From here you will see the popup menu to select your Format: SBL or Turabian, then Footnote or Bibliography. In addition, you can create markers around your content (the typical being quotation marks), and even markers around your citation. Then, if you are using the footnote format you can opt to have the citation entered as a footnote in your favorite word processor like Word (2004/2008), Mellel, OpenOffice.org, or Nisus Writer Pro. Unfortunately, Pages is not currently supported because of a limitation in how it handles pasted text - this is not a bug in our feature.

After setting your preferences, it's just a matter of selecting the content you want to cite, and using the shortcut key (⌃⌘C), selecting Copy As Citation... from the Edit menu, or right-clicking (⌃ click) and selecting Copy As Citation… . Then, switch to your favorite app and simply paste (⌘ V). That's it. Simple.

In order to highlight some of the strengths of this feature, here are some samples of citations taken from Accordance (N = footnote; B = bibliography):

N. "‏שׁאב‎," HALOT, 4:1367.

In this SBL footnote you can see that we account for the Hebrew entry (exported as Unicode based upon my preference setting), the SBL standard abbreviation for HALOT, along with the correct volume and page in which the entry is located (thanks to our recent update of this module).

B. Koehler, Ludwig, Walter Baumgartner, and M. E. J. Richardon, eds. The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament. Accordance electronic edition, version 3.0. Leiden: Brill, 2000.

Here, in the SBL bibliography, you can see that we accurately account for all the editors and list the title in full. In addition, the version number of the module is automatically extracted according to your local copy.

"Some understand the thrones as a picture of Jerusalem and the other towns of Judah encircled and under siege (as suggested by 1:15b)."

N. F. B. Huey Jr., Jeremiah (NAC 16; ed. E. Ray Clendenen; Accordance electronic ed. Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1993), 54-55.

In this SBL footnote you can see that the cited text is one coherent sentence, but is actually contained within two pages of the print edition. We have stripped the page marker from the Accordance module, and accounted for the page range in the footnote citation. In addition you can see that the precise volume and abbreviated title are cited.

"In 6:11-18 Paul adds a postscript in his own handwriting."

N. Hans Dieter Betz, Galatians: A Commentary on Paul's Letter to the Churches in Galatia, ed. Harold W. Attridge, vol. 69 of Hermeneia: A Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible. Accordance electronic ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1979), 312.

In this Turabian footnote you can see that we are able to accurately extract the proper book title from within a multi-volume Accordance module. Furthermore, you can see that the Turabian style includes the text "vol. 69 of Hermeneia… ." This is a shift from how SBL handles this type of citation, which shows you that we don't simply recycle the citation styles and change the name. The accuracy of the specific citation style is maintained.

"For example,  4QSam^a contains about three lines introducing chap. 11 of 1 Samuel heretofore known only partially in Josephus."

N. "Aims of OT Textual Criticism." WTJ 51 (1989): 97-98.

This SBL footnote reveals several significant strengths of this feature, but also a shortcoming. Our Theological Journal Library contains hundreds of articles from a number of the leading journals. In this citation we are able, again, to accurately extract the page range, strip the page marker from the module, cite the SBL approved journal abbreviation, and the title of the article.

B. “Aims of OT Textual Criticism.” Westminster Theological Journal 51, no. 1 (Spring 1989): 94-108.

In this Turabian bibliography entry you can see the same elements as in the SBL footnote, but note that we properly list the full journal title, the issue number of the journal (not required for SBL), the month or season of publication (also not requried for SBL), and extract the proper page range for the entire article.

But, as you can see in both examples, the author is missing. You will simply have to insert it on your own.

Currently we do not support extraction of authors from multi-article modules that have individual authors. This affects dictionaries like Anchor and NIDOTTE, as well as journals. We realize that this is incorrect formatting, and hope to address this very complex issue in a future update of this feature.

These are just a few examples of this exciting feature. We invested a signficant amount of reasearch and development into this, and hope that it saves you time, and more importantly, further demonstrates our dedication to making Accordance your top choice for a robust, stable, and intuitive Mac Bible software program.