March-May 2003

In June of 2002 I was approached by Cameron Campbell, the Director of Indexes, with an invitation to head up an ambitious project to complete the historical indexing of all the periodicals currently indexed in ATLA RDB, whose initial date of publication was 1948 or earlier. I was given a list of periodicals, about 133, and promised two full-time indexers working for three years, provided that the funding came through. I accepted the challenge. The indexers were hired. The project began with the overlapping ATLAS titles, some 19 periodicals. In February 2003 I began concurrent indexing of the weeklies the Christian Oracle (1884-1899), the forerunner of the Christian Century, and the Christian Century itself, the 1919 volume to be exact. In order to evaluate the time it would take to index this vast title, I assigned Todd Ferry the 1917 volume, working two days a week, with instructions to keep records of the time it took to index each of the 52 issues. By the beginning of May, I had enough data for extrapolation. According to my best estimate, the retrospective indexing of the Christian Century, 1900-1948, including issue numbers, articles, book reviews and book-masters, would generate some 65,000 records. Since research on total numbers of records per title had never been done for the RIP corpus, I spent a full week in the library stacks, amassing comparable date for all the titles in the A-B list left after excluding some 17 titles on the basis of frequency (weekly) and denominational specificity (e.g., Discipliana), leaving 68 titles in all. My calculations for the limited A-B list, minus the Christian Oracle/Christian Century, came to 115,600 records. The total, adding the adjusted A-B list and the Christian Oracle/Christian Century: 180,500. In order to make sense of these numbers, Cameron supplied me with a conservative tally of the number of records that a full-time indexer could reasonably be expected to generate over the course of a year: 6,200. According to these figures, three indexers working for three years should create some 55,800 records. That is less than the total number of records in the Christian Oracle/Christian Century, and is less than one-third of the gross adjusted numbers for the A-B categories. These figures do not reflect the numbers of records necessary to index the remaining titles on the original list, the so-called "C" category of some 47 RIP titles; since they have not been surveyed, no figures can be projected.

Before I describe the mid-course corrections to RIP, there is one other factor to be considered. As it turns out, the Index Department has been subsidizing a sizable number of hours per week of RIP indexing, at the expense of the indexing of current periodicals and polygraphs. As of the first week in June, the RIP project will lose 11 out of 112.5 hours per week of indexing.

In order to increase the number of records generated for this project, Cameron in conjunction with the other ATLA Directors altered the rules for RIP book reviews. Heretofore, if a review consisted of 200 words or less, in keeping with ATLA RDB practice, we excluded it. As of May 2003 we have now upped the minimum limit to 1,000 words or greater. Of all the tasks entailed in indexing, the creation of book-masters (essentially, an incomplete catalogue record), the first step to indexing a book review, has proven the most time-consuming for RIP and ATLA RDB staff alike. With far fewer book-masters to create, the RIP project will cover more ground, at the expense of adding fewer book reviews to ATLA RDB than would be the case if the 200-word or less rule applied. It is possible that a student will be hired part-time to create book-masters for RIP; there is precedent for this in the history of the Index Department.

Clearly, any fundamental mid-course corrections to RIP must entail drastically reducing the canon of titles to be indexed. On the basis of the titles whose RIP indexing is already complete, those underway, and the total number of projected records per title of periodicals published in 1938 or later, I have adopted the following list as our goal:

To date, we have finished RIP indexing for these 8 titles:

	American Catholic Sociological Review (1940-1948)
	Catholic Biblical Quarterly (1939-1948)
	Eastern Buddhist (1921-1939 [publication suspended until 1949])
	Ecumenical Review (1948-1949)
	Estudios Bíblicos (1941-1948)
	Hebrew Union College Annual (1919, 1924-1948)
	Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology (1947-1948)
	Journal of Pastoral Care (1947-1948)

Indexing has begun on these 8 titles:

	Christian Century (issues in 1917-1919, 1940 and 1941)
	Church History (1932-1948, missing 1942 only)
	Journal of Biblical Literature (1881-1941, 1944)
	Journal of the National Association of Biblical Instructors and Journal of Bible and Religion (the ancestors of the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 1933-1940)
	Orate Fratres (1926-1946, with gaps rapidly being filled)
	Theological Studies (1940-1941)
	Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte (1948)

We expect to index these 20 titles by 2005:

	Biblical Archaeology (1938-)
	Commentary (1945-)
	Covenant Quarterly (1941-)
	Journal of Jewish Studies (1948-)
	Journal of Religious Thought (1943-)
	Mélanges de Science Religieuse (1944-)
	Nederlands Theologisch Tijdschrift (1946-)
	Reformed Theological Review (1942-)
	Revue des Études Byzantines (1944-)
	Scottish Journal of Theology (1948-)
	Studia Theologica: Scandinavian Journal of Theology (1947-)
	Theological Studies (1940-)
	Theologische Zeitschrift (1945-)
	Theology Today (1944-)
	Traditio (1943-)
	Union Seminary Quarterly Review (1945-)
	Unitarian Universalist Christian (1946-)
	Vigiliae Christianae: A Review of Early Christian Life and Language (1947-)
	Westminster Theological Journal (1938-)
	Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte (1948-)

Indexing has been suspended on:

	Bibliotheca Sacra (1856-1948)
	Christian Century (1900-1939)
	Christian Oracle (1884-1899)

That is to say, given current indexing hours and library access, we expect to finish the indexing of all the 36 periodical titles enumerated above, save for the suspended titles. Christian Century is, obviously, a special case. We will cover the years 1940-1948 only. I regard this as a conservative estimate, but, in light of earlier pronouncements, will promise nothing more. No periodical titles with a publication date prior to 1938 will be attempted until the named 35 titles are complete.

On an entirely different note, production statistics reveal that the number of records generated by the RIP staff has risen markedly from those of the last quarter. In my opinion, this reflects the maturation of Ben Butler as an indexer, together with a growing comfort with the material and workflow by all involved.

The spirit of the RIP team is simply excellent. Todd and Ben bring extraordinary initiative and competence to the task and, wonder of wonders, appear to enjoy themselves. Cameron Campbell has fully endorsed the mid-course changes necessary for the longevity of our project, and provides redoubtable assistance at every occasion. It is privilege to work with them all.

Ben Butler is ready to begin indexing in Hyde Park. His presence there will grow increasingly important if we hire a student to key in the book-masters for RIP, for the following reasons. The student should be able to move through RIP volumes many times faster than the indexers, since he or she will be utilizing only a small portion of the volumes (book-masters that are 1,000 words in length or greater). Current University of Chicago policies limit our individual number of checked-out items to 25. With Ben working in Hyde Park, we can have an aggregate of 75 RIP items in circulation—and we will need Ben to help schlep books to the Loop office!

The University of Chicago libraries and Jesuit-Krauss-McCormick libraries have each made sustained efforts to ensure that the RIP staff can operate effectively on-site. I would particularly single out Berry C. Hopkins and Yana V. Serdyuk, Co-Interim Directors of JKM Library, and James Vaugham, Assistant Director for Access and Facilities at Joseph Regenstein Library of the University of Chicago, for their listening ears and willingness to support our network-hungry ATLA indexing in their libraries.

Respectfully Submitted,

Steven W. Holloway, RIP Project Director
June 5, 2003