Marking Capabilities

I have been thinking about this for a VERY long time. I love the new feature that allows you to make a specific number of passages using cookies, but I would love to use the online scriptures as my primary resource. A resource I could access from anywhere I have connectivity with all my markings. I've tried several Firefox extensions and comment programs, but none seem to do what I am looking for.

For those who have used MarkMyScriptures... that is perfect. Notes, underlining, highlighting... perfect! Can we put that online somewhere?

I think that would be a great idea as well. I'll pass it along.

Tom

I'll definitely second that.

I think we can take it even farther than that.

Make it so you can add links from the scriptures back into General Conference and other documents.

Only one of the handheld options allows you to do this---Mobipocket. But mobipocket is also a bit clunky.

It would be nice to be able to annotate, highlight, and link.

Make links back into General Conference, as a church wide fotenote or as a personal annotation? I think it would be great to have both. The fotenotes we have were made to fit on the written page, but with the internet does that really matter? It would be nice to have each scripture "footnte" have references the Conference Talks that it was used in.

jeffvand wrote:I have been thinking about this for a VERY long time. I love the new feature that allows you to make a specific number of passages using cookies, but I would love to use the online scriptures as my primary resource. A resource I could access from anywhere I have connectivity with all my markings. I've tried several Firefox extensions and comment programs, but none seem to do what I am looking for.

For those who have used MarkMyScriptures... that is perfect. Notes, underlining, highlighting... perfect! Can we put that online somewhere?

And to other sources in the Church library. And to other resources in the internet (jewish old testament commentaries, maps, google earth, art, clip art, music). I'm not sure how the links would be rated or qualified as some would surely be objectionable. Perhaps a community flag for official, authoritative but non official, interesting, speculative, way out. And a star system to rate the link.

And maybe a community comment area for scriptural discussion?

junkman1989 wrote:And to other sources in the Church library. And to other resources in the internet (jewish old testament commentaries, maps, google earth, art, clip art, music). I'm not sure how the links would be rated or qualified as some would surely be objectionable. Perhaps a community flag for official, authoritative but non official, interesting, speculative, way out. And a star system to rate the link.

And maybe a community comment area for scriptural discussion?

Or go the social network route. Let you see comments from friends and friends see your comments.

Maybe have some global ones that are authoritative.

josh wrote:Let you see comments from friends and friends see your comments.

My personal set of scriptures is full of annotations that I have written in the margins. Some notes have come from Sunday School classes and others from talks I have heard or articles I have read. But the notes that are most precious to me are the ones that have come from personal scripture study and from really digging into a topic. Unfortunately, I have found that such notes are usually for me alone and are usually not received well when shared unless the Spirit has prompted me to share.

I'm always afraid that I might lose my scriptures, especially when I put them in checked baggage on an airline flight. I wish there was a way of storing all of my annotations in a computer file. I guess that would be the personal journal that I'm supposed to be keeping. But in paper form, that could get lost as well.

I'm thinking there ought to be a software solution that merges the functions of a personal journal with the electronic scriptures.

But I'm also saying that your marked scriptures could be a highly personal thing and a highly individualized thing, and they ought to be kept private, as you would a personal journal, except when prompted by the Spirit to share.

Yeah, I guess I thought of the social annotation as more of a "family bible" thing. Not meant for a group much outside your family, kind of like a journal. Kind of like Adam's Book of Remembrance from Moses 6:5:

5 And a book of remembrance was kept, in the which was recorded, in the language of Adam, for it was given unto as many as called upon God to write by the spirit of inspiration;

I see the potential for a solution that handles both. The solution can have either different copies of scriptures, or one set of scriptures and you have different levels of tagging (personal, shared, global, etc.). That way you can have a personal set of notes, while also having some shared between you and your family or friend. Maybe the global sharing could become argumentative and controversial. But I do think it would be neat to start a scripture study with a buddy where you have a topic of focus or something.

I would love to see the online scriptures include marking and annotating functions, then I'd love to see Mark My Scriptures sync with it so I could carry my markings etc on my Palm and use it on the website.

mkmurray wrote:I see the potential for a solution that handles both. The solution can have either different copies of scriptures, or one set of scriptures and you have different levels of tagging (personal, shared, global, etc.). That way you can have a personal set of notes, while also having some shared between you and your family or friend. Maybe the global sharing could become argumentative and controversial. But I do think it would be neat to start a scripture study with a buddy where you have a topic of focus or something.

I agree. In place of shared though, maybe an option to select groups of people you would like to share it with like (family, local institute group, friends, etc.). Something like this was an idea my brother came up with and has been kicking around with me for a year or so now. We both feel it would be a great resource and idea. Sooner or later, I'm sure someone is going to do it. Given that it's something that really should be a nonprofit idea and available to all though, it would be nice if the Church did it. If the Church did it, that could also serve as motivation for them to get several other resources easily available and linked in such as the institute manuals. Also, if the Church is doing it, there won't be concerns over the use of the Church's copyrighted material either.

There are many spiritual thoughts that probably aren't suitable for public sharing, but I can think of several things that would be suitable for public sharing such as the history behind certain events. For individuals who are aware of some of this, it would be nice if they could share it. Personally, I've found the key to understanding a lot of the more obscure Old Testament passages is to understand the history to which they refer - something that isn't common knowledge these days like it was back then.

I have been thinking about this idea for a very long time and have been seriously contemplating developing my own web app and hosting it to provide not only the marking, notes, and URL cross reference capability, but also book-marking etc. I agree that it would be much better to build this into scriptures.lds.org.

There definitely needs to be a way to personalize the scriptures and to securely store one's personal information in the web app's database. Would not be too dissimilar to how this blogging web-site works. All of these comments and links have to be stored somewhere!

Dallas wrote:I have been thinking about this idea for a very long time and have been seriously contemplating developing my own web app and hosting it to provide not only the marking, notes, and URL cross reference capability, but also book-marking etc. I agree that it would be much better to build this into scriptures.lds.org.

There definitely needs to be a way to personalize the scriptures and to securely store one's personal information in the web app's database. Would not be too dissimilar to how this blogging web-site works. All of these comments and links have to be stored somewhere!

You might want to chime in on this thread. Members of the forum are starting a community project to develop an application very similar to what you described here.

I never know which conference talks I have listened to, especially as I go back and listen again with my family. It would be great to have a way of ticking the ones I have watched

I don't know about the website, but the Gospel Library app has study plans that you can make for a certain general conference or standard work.