SGJ Apps

Free software for Biblical scholars and students

 

Cite SBLHS — towards more fruitful essay writing — β

Cite SBLHS is designed to produce citation footnotes, endnotes and a bibliography for publications conforming to the Society for Biblical Literature's  Handbook of Style: For Ancient Near Eastern, Biblical, and Early Christian Studies (aka SBLHS).  It is currently available for use as a beta test.  It also includes integration with Ibidem, the bibliographic management tool of Nota Bene.

While still in beta test, it is being used by quite a few students.  You may like to read some testimonials.

Installing and using is easy:

  1. Please ensure that you have the Java Runtime Environment installed, available freely from Sun.  You’ll need v1.6.0 or above.
  2. Download and save the latest jar file from here.  It will be called CiteSBLHS-vNNNN.jar where NNNN is the version number.
  3. Run CiteSBLHS-vNNNN.jar as you would any other program (e.g., double-click on its icon.)  It works on just about every operating system.
  4. You’ll also find SampleProject.oap on the download page, which you should load into Cite SBLHS when you start, as it will provide useful worked examples to follow when entering your own records (most easily done by simply adding your records to this file).  It includes records representing:
    • all the examples found in SBLHS which are currently supported by Cite SBLHS;
    • all the examples found in Oak Hill Theological College’s Guidelines on Presenting Your Essay/Assignment which are currently supported by Cite SBLHS;
    • a few other illustrative examples.

Samples of what Cite SBLHS will do for you

The sample project file SampleProject.oap has some example “essays.”  These are collections of citations, matching a particular piece of writing that you're engaged with.  The sample essays match the three collections of examples described above: from the SBLHS, the OHC guidelines and my extras.   Each essay can be exported to an RTF file to make it easy to copy citations into footnotes/endnotes or into Nota Bene, and to copy a complete bibliography.  Here are the RTF files for those essays:

Praise for Cite SBLHS

Steffen, thank you so much for your skill in producing this excellent application and for your generosity in releasing it freely. My students are indebted to you.

John Kendall, Lecturer at Wales Evangelical School of Theology (WEST)

I have introduced students to this resource and they have found it immensely helpful when preparing bibliographies and footnotes in formal papers. For those who have used it, I have found no errors in the way it correlates the data to the SBL Handbook of Style. I highly recommend this tool as convenient, reliable, and easy to use. 

Dr. James Nogalski, Department of Religion, Baylor University; author of the Student Supplement for the SBL Handbook of Style

Great job Steffen. This software has saved me hours! Thanks for all the revisions/updates too.  :-)

Dr. Jason Roach, student, Oak Hill Theological College

 

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