[sword-devel] Papyri Index Volunteers

[Troy A. Griffitts]

Are you interested in ancient manuscripts of the NT?

Do you have the skills it takes to recognize what Greek text is on a 
manuscript page?

Are you looking for a wonderful project where you can volunteer your 
time for a very worthwhile cause?

If YES to all of the above, please read on.

CSNTM is an organization with a goal to photograph and make freely 
available images of all important NT MSS.  Their website is here:

http://csntm.org

We at CrossWire have been working on a MS indexing tool that will help 
volunteers help CSNTM index all of their images.

If you would like to help out and don't mind running a VERY early beta 
of our indexing tool, please follow these instructions:

1) Register an account on our community site at:

http://community.crosswire.org

All previous experimental accounts have been removed, so if you have 
been testing our community site in the past, you will need to create a 
new account.  PLEASE USE YOUR SVN USERID AND PASSWORD if you already 
have an SVN account for CrossWire's source control repository.  We hope 
to share accounts between these systems soon.

2) After verifying your account and logging in, click on the [projects] 
tab, and then select the Manuscript Indexer link.

3) In another browser tab, visit http://csntm.org then click on the 
Manuscripts link, browse through their documents and find one that 
interests you with a small number of images, to start, for 
experimenting, note the Gregory-Aland Number (first column) and click 
the _View_ link.  This will take you to the list of images for this 
document.  Copy the URL address from your browser window.

4) Back in the browser tab or window where you are logged into the 
CrossWire Community Manuscript Indexer, type in the Gregory-Aland number 
of your document of choice and hit the [Create] button, then select your 
newly created document and on the right side in the Base URL field paste 
the URL you copied from the CSNTM site and hit [Save]

5) The [Load All Images At This URL] button should now be enabled.  Hit 
this button and be patient while the images are slurped down and 
thumbnails are built.

6) Click on the first thumbnail to popup the image viewer, zoom in, and 
through research on this document and from using your keen Greek skills 
determine and enter the Biblical coverage of this page, e.g., 
Rom.1.1-3.19.  Be sure to hit the [Save] button for this image and move 
on to the next.

7) Once you have the hang of thing, come back here and report that you 
are planning to volunteer and specify which document you are currently 
working through.  THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT as we don't want to duplicate 
work.  We hope to soon have a project status page where you will be able 
to see what documents are still available and click to claim your next 
document, but until then, we'll have to coordinate here.


PLEASE ENJOY YOURSELF AND SPREAD THE WORD TO WHOMEVER YOU FEEL MIGHT BE 
INTERESTED IN HELPING OUT.

The CSNTM guys are doing a wonderful work to collect these images and 
make them freely available.  This indexing project will provide the 
means to manipulate these images usefully from our software and other 
projects, and will provide the world with the easily accessible evidence 
attesting to the reliability of the New Testament.  I am really excited 
about this project and about collaborating together with you all and 
CSNTM on this work!  May God make use of these efforts to draw people to 
Himself.

	Serving together,
		-Troy.