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Yale Anchor 12 prophets module


Gedalya

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Any news on the update for the 12 prophets from the Yale Anchor series??

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We're in the middle of our busiest time of year preparing releases for our Fall conferences. We are working diligently on Anchor, and many other titles. Notification of the next update will come when it is ready for release.

 

Thanks!

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  • 5 weeks later...

8 months ago (April 2014) I purchased the Yale Anchor Bible OT Series. Is it too much to expect that the 12 prophets module would be completed by now? I must say frankly that I am very disappointed with Accordance.

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Gordon: This series has proved more massive and complex than we anticipated. We placed it, from the beginning, in the hands of one of our best and most experienced developers for commentaries. Our forecasts for the release dates were hopeful estimates. They did not take into account some serious and unexpected health issues that developed in his family, and which have necessitated him cutting back on the hours he can give us. Barring further complications he does hope to complete the OT volume by the end of this year, but nothing is certain in this life.

 

We see no advantage to giving the remainder of this task to another developer, so we must ask you to be patient for a little longer. You at least have access to the completed volumes. Anchor will not progress any faster with frequent inquiries from users. We have not deliberately diverted the developer to other tasks, but we do encourage all our staff to put important family and health matters before work duties. I am confident that you will understand.

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8 months ago (April 2014) I purchased the Yale Anchor Bible OT Series. Is it too much to expect that the 12 prophets module would be completed by now? I must say frankly that I am very disappointed with Accordance.

 

I understand your frustration, Gordon. There's so much great material that I want for Accordance, too *cough* Ancient Near Eastern texts *cough* But these things will always take a lot of time even when everything goes according to plan. I have some experience with making OCR on TIFF files myself and even that takes a good while to do properly even though it's pretty "easy". It's just time consuming and tedious work. But from what I gather - and please do correct me if I'm phrasing this the wrong way or too simple - the guys at Accordance have to do OCR and tag everything from scratch right down to every single letter, which is a programming tour de force. This is one of the main reasons why I'm impressed with the program. I'm actually surprised that things aren't moving slower. Sure, the range of available texts in Accordance is somewhat smaller compared to other Bible softwares, but the sheer amount of programming for the texts available is peerless.

 

Besides, it could be a lot worse: At the current rate of which the Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft is publishing their fascicles of the Biblia Hebraica Quinta, it most likely won't even be finished the next 30+ years! My professor told me that most of the scholars assigned to this task are busy teaching and doing separate research - once they've finished all these things, only then may they find the time to work on Quinta.

 

Gordon: This series has proved more massive and complex than we anticipated. We placed it, from the beginning, in the hands of one of our best and most experienced developers for commentaries. Our forecasts for the release dates were hopeful estimates. They did not take into account some serious and unexpected health issues that developed in his family, and which have necessitated him cutting back on the hours he can give us. Barring further complications he does hope to complete the OT volume by the end of this year, but nothing is certain in this life.

 

We see no advantage to giving the remainder of this task to another developer, so we must ask you to be patient for a little longer. You at least have access to the completed volumes. Anchor will not progress any faster with frequent inquiries from users. We have not deliberately diverted the developer to other tasks, but we do encourage all our staff to put important family and health matters before work duties. I am confident that you will understand.

I'm very sorry to hear about the health issues in your programmer's family - I hope it all goes well.

 

With kind regards

 

Pchris

Edited by Pchris
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Biblical studies research is largely unfunded in the US, unlike many European countries. Research grants can free up professors to work on projects like BHQ; the same is true of endowed chairs, where part of the stipulation for the endowment is a reduced teaching load. Teaching loads are also generally significantly lower at the major public ["state-supported"] universities, but many of them are not comfortable having biblical studies departments. Somehow, it has become a matter of the separation of Church and State [though the same universities scurry to hire people to teach Islam].

 

Yes, adding these older resources requires using OCR and correcting the errors, before we ever start programming a tool for Accordance. Publishers used to discard the e-texts entirely. Even now, publishers' e-texts are often filled with errors, as the final edits are made on galley proofs rather than the e-texts themselves. No, I am not a developer for Accordance, but I did work as a editor for Eerdmans, so I know something of the editorial process.]

 

All things said, thanks for your patience and understanding.

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I also bought the Anchor OT series when it came out. I thought that the price was so good because there would be an extensive wait for some of the parts to arrive.

 

After having received the other parts, I still feel like I got a bargain by paying up front and waiting it out.

 

Thanks for all your efforts!

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  • 1 month later...

Funny, I was just wondering the same thing since I just bought the IVP Prophets dictionary for some work I'm preparing. Although reading above (and in other threads) it does appear that the Accordance staff (somewhat understandably) don't appreciate these type of questions. I'm sure they're working hard and hopefully we'll have them soon, along with the Apocryphal volumes :)

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What I'd really love to hear is that Accordance will be getting Craig Koester's new Revelation volume eventually :)

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Gordon, I do understand your frustration.

 

I tend to give Accordance the benefit of the doubt on these types of things but I will admit from a purely consumer stand point it does cost them. I really wanted to pre-order the NIDNTTE set that was offered for introductory pricing (and eventually I did) but I thought long and hard about whether I believed it would be ready this spring as advertised.

 

That said, if Accordance had waited to only offer the Anchor Set once it was complete I wouldn't have been able to use the volumes I have currently these past months.

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Gordon, I do understand your frustration.

 

I tend to give Accordance the benefit of the doubt on these types of things but I will admit from a purely consumer stand point it does cost them. I really wanted to pre-order the NIDNTTE set that was offered for introductory pricing (and eventually I did) but I thought long and hard about whether I believed it would be ready this spring as advertised.

 

That said, if Accordance had waited to only offer the Anchor Set once it was complete I wouldn't have been able to use the volumes I have currently these past months.

 

Jeremy, as we said above, the delay on Anchor is because of a family medical situation with one of our developers. We've tried to be professional and sensitive to both one of our own "family members," and also be transparent about the delay. At this point we really just need you all to understand that we are working diligently on this and will notify when it is ready for release. At present there are only 3 volumes left to do (Nahum was a particularly complex volume formatting-wise as well). We don't have an exact release date available, but we are getting much closer.

 

As far as NIDNTTE, that has nothing to do with Anchor. A different person is working on it, and it is significantly smaller and less complex. We will definitely have it ready by "Spring", and likely much sooner. Though, we are not announcing a release date at this time.

 

Thanks again for your support and patience.

 

Happy Holidays…

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