Oh to be a student of the hard sciences and be able to use a database like Pubmed.
For those who don’t know what PubMed is, think of combining RAMBI, IXtheo, BIiBIL, BILDI, and ATLA all together into one delightful database complete with abstracts. But not only that — the actual PDF’s of the articles are there too. It is the one-stop shop for your research. But oh well, I’m a biblical studies student. Now I realize that this is a 21st century rant and I should be grateful that actual bibliography collection takes me a fraction of the time that it did for you old timer’s that studied before the 90’s, but I like to have my cake and eat it too. If the technology is there then that’s what I would like to use.
Now I could be wrong, but I think the vast majority of us use ATLA for our research. Let me outline some of the regular scenarios when finding articles on ATLA.

1. I find an article from CBQ or something else that is actually stored in ATLA(S). So I can download the PDF immediately. SWEEET!
2. I find an article that ATLA does not store. So I then go to my school’s library database, search the periodical list for the journal. A few things will happen:
   1. my library will have electronic access to the journal, like to JSTOR, and I go to that database, search for the article title, and download it.
   2. my library has electronic access to the journal. I go to the database, but they only started digitizing them 3 years ago so my article isn’t online.
   3. My library has access to an electronic database for the journal, but the older volumes of the journal require a further level of access that my university doesn’t have.
   4. My library only has the journal hard bound and I have to go down and photocopy it. How 1990’s is that!!

Now I realize that not every article will always be online now, I’ll have to wait another decade or so for that. But here is what I would like to have happen: I go to ATLA and search for stuff. I find an article and either:

1. ATLA has it stored as a PDF and is available for immediate download or,
2. ATLA provides the DOI to the article online

That’s it! How great would that be!

The DOI (Digital Object Identifier), it is the key that few in biblical studies have latched on to yet. It is a permanent and stable URL for an article — not a website but the actual article. Imagine how nice it would be to find the article you want in ATLA, open the DOI and BAM! you are taken directly to where the article is. The database would recognize your university proxy and the article is there for you to use. Most major article databases and publishers have begun or are already finished assigning DOI’s to their article databases, yet I do not know of any biblical studies bibliographic database (RAMBI, IXtheo, BIiBIL, BILDI, ATLA, etc) that have begun to make these a regular part of the citation information. It is such a great idea that I told Ebsco they need to start updating their records to add the DOI’s. Unfortunately, ATLA doesn’t work that way. They only add the content that the publishers give to them. dang it! So it is up to you publishers (and I know every self-respecting biblical studies publisher reads my o so important blog posts) to provide the DOI’s to ATLA, AND make sure that you tell them you want it as part of the citation. And you also have to provide the DOI’s for your archive - or ask ATLA to do it. That is not as hard as it sounds, because crossref.org has a DOI resolver that will do the work for you. Lastly, biblical studies publishers need to get on the DOI bandwagon if they haven’t already. Every article that is available online from a publisher should have a DOI — this includes those housed by ATLA or those hosted on a publisher site (like the new BBR archive online for instance). I thought of starting a petition to get ATLA to add DOI’s to their database, then realized how lame a petition like that would be. I’ll settle for whining and nagging, and hope that others will whine and nag too. Nagging and whining is what gets things done, trust me!

Cheers!