Theological libraries are using more open source software to solve their problems. Examples include CMSs such as Omeka and Drupal, digital signage software like Xibo, and ILS systems like Koha. Recent conference proceedings have highlighted specific uses of tools at specific institutions in specific situations, as well as the potential difficulties of implementing them. This shows that interest exists in the topic. However, there is no real data on the overall landscape, on which tools are popular for specific problems, or on the skill levels that staff need to have in order to use those tools. This paper draws off of a survey of theological libraries and aims to show the current overall state of open source software usage by providing a general picture of the tools that theological libraries are using or have used and what the overall experience with those tools are at institutions of various sizes as well as introducing various tools and the technical skills needed to make full use of them.
The presentation discusses a plan of creating a database of the historical registers in the Library of the Forty Martyrs in Mardin/Turkey, dated between the 15th century and the 19th century. These records relate to ecclesiastic aspects which include: birth, baptism, marriage, and death records. In addition, there are biographies of clergies, saints, notables, writers, and copyists. Furthermore, the lists of ecclesiastic ordinations such as deacons, monks, nuns, priests, bishops, and patriarchs are included. The last major category present in Mardin’s archives is documents relating to endowments and donations.
These archives are important sources for the social religious history in Near East during the Ottoman period. The database would offer direct access to scholars and students of Ottoman history to the sources and the possibility to examine the duplicates of original documents as well as the possibility to search a particular word in the documents. This topic relates also to the area of librarianship, the use of technology, scholarly communications, and programs that apply to religious studies bibliographers working in university settings. In short, the extracted social, cultural, religious, and geographic information in these archives will be stored in a database system and made of use to scholarly research by schema program.
