RANDOM SBL 2010 REFLECTIONS AND LINKS:
Bob Cargill has posted Introductory Remarks for the Inaugural Blogger and Online Publication Session at the 2010 Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting and his paper for the same session, Instruction, Research, and the Future of Online Educational Technologies.
Chris Brady has posted his paper from this session on his Targuman blog and the paper has an important proposal: A Modest Proposal: Assessing Digital Biblical Studies. [UPDATE (26 Nov): Chris Heard responds to Chris's paper at Higgaion.]
Michael Barber also published his paper from this sesssion, Weblogs and the Academy, on The Sacred Page blog.
James McGrath collects these and other posts on the session at Exploring Our Matrix. [UPDATE: James has now posted the full text of his own paper at the same session, The Blogging Revolution: New Technologies and their Impact on How we do Scholarship. I like the Google cartoon.]
Someone – I won't say who – was in the back of the room at this session and later told me that people actually were getting out their iPads and following my paper online as I read it.
In the E-Publish or Perish section (S21-314) there were lots of very good panelist presentations. Particularly exciting to me was Ian Scott's announcement that the new Grammateus user interface (for user-friendly production of original-text critical editions) is now available in association the Online Critical Pseudepigrapha. It has my head whirring about other possible uses.
Some very good papers and discussion also at the Pseudepigrapha Group's session on "The Inspired Production of Texts and Traditions" (S22-331a, formerly S22-138). Unfortunately, I had to leave early in order to make it to the Epigraphy session honoring Bruce Zuckerman, but I will mull over the handouts I collected from the session. I have some related thoughts in my 2006 SBL paper Scripture as Prophetically Revealed Writings (PDF, 169 KB) toward the end.
Ed Cook reports Scenes and Observations from SBL Atlanta 2010.
Mark Goodacre has SBL posts here, here, here, and here (additional to those noted here) at his NT Blog. [UPDATE (26 Nov): One more post from Mark here.]
Rebecca Lesses, at her Mystical Politics blog, worries: SBL – an increasingly confessional Christian scholarly society? She has other SBL observations here. [UPDATE (26 Nov): John Hobbins responds at Ancient Hebrew Poetry.]
Loren Rosson has SBL observations here and here at his Busybody blog. [UPDATE: Loren has a third post here.]
Peter Head posts reflections at the Evangelical Textual Criticism blog. I agree that the lack of wireless internet access in the hotel meeting rooms was a pity (and rather primitive). Moreover, the Hyatt Regency not only charges a daily fee for internet access, the fee is applied individually to each device used, which is a rip-off. [UPDATE: James McGrath posts on the wi-fi issue here and he is quite right.] Overall I was not impressed with the Atlanta facilities, although the staff were unfailingly polite and helpful.
Rumors of Atlanta being overrun by zombies turned out to be exaggerated.
I'm sure there are many other interesting SBL blog posts that I haven't seen. If I run across good ones later, I'll add them to this post.
UPDATE: Oh, yes, the only book I bought was Stephen R. Donaldson, Against All Things Ending, the third book in the Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. I'd held off buying it until now because my copies of the earlier volumes are all the American edition and I wanted a consistent set. I had to walk a mile to get to a bookstore that had it (as I said, Atlanta facilities are not impressive) but it was worth it.
UPDATE (27 November): It seems that the blogging session was being recorded. No one told me that. I wonder if my extemporaneous comments about alcohol and zombies will be preserved for posterity. (Via James McGrath.) [UPDATE (29 November): More podcasts here, here, here, and here. Bibliobloggers' lunch photos here.]
Also, David Larsen reports on mysticism sessions at his Heavenly Ascents blog.