“Talmud” means in Tannaitic Hebrew “learning,” “study,” or more precisely “expounding.” From the Middle Ages and on, the term came to refer to two corpora of rabbinic literature from Late Antiquity, called, respectively, Palestinian Talmud, or “Yerushalmi,” and Babylonian Talmud, or “Bavli.” Even broader, the term can mean rabbinic literature in Late Antiquity in general to include corpora of the Mishnah, Midrash, and other genres of late ancient rabbinic literature as well. There traditionally has been an incongruity in thinking about “Talmud and philosophy.” Philosophy was always understood as a discipline of thinking that has developed historically from Antiquity on. However, “Talmud” has been predominantly understood as an object, a book, “the Talmud” as opposed to “Talmud” as an intellectual discipline. That understanding leads to the first rubric in this article: the Talmud as an Object of Philosophical or Theoretical Inquiry: Comparative Study. The rubric embraces synchronic and diachronic comparative studies of the Talmud (as an object) in its relationship to philosophy as a discipline at various stages of its development. Yet beginning from the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period, the Talmud acquired a new understanding. Now, like philosophy, it has come to be understood as a discipline of thinking (which renders in English as Talmud, without the “the”). Not totally unlike how the discipline of rhetoric has been classified by different authors as either a part of philosophy or the philosophy’s most significant other, Talmud also has been placed differently in relation to philosophy. Different authors understand it either as one among other philosophical disciplines or, alternatively, as a discipline of its own, distinct from philosophy. That translates into the second rubric of this article, Talmud as a Discipline of Thinking at different periods of its evolution from Late Antiquity to modern times. The third major rubric is thematic; it includes works in which Talmud and philosophy is a theme (“(The) Talmud and Philosophy” as a Theme). As is true for all schematic divisions, a specific work, author, or line of thinking can defy this partition. Focused as it is on relationships between Talmud and philosophy, this article does not address a related but radically different field of philosophy, that of halakhah (Jewish Law), for the latter treats the Talmud as neither an object nor a discipline, but rather as a source of law; this is a radically different pursuit belonging to a bibliography on law and philosophy, which is not treated in this article. This selected bibliography focuses primarily on individual monographs published in the last ten years, with an even more selective mention of what has proved to be influential works in this category published earlier. The compilers of this bibliography envision it as a node and invite additional entries accompanied by original bibliographic descriptions, which will be credited to the name of their authors. Rather than providing general bibliographic descriptions available elsewhere, the annotations of entries focus on the relation of each monograph to the theme of this particular article.
Virtual Reference is an online question-and-answer service occurring in real time, often also known as live digital reference. Sponsored by the United States Department of Education, the Virtual Reference Desk (VRD) is a project dedicated to the advancement of digital reference and the successful creation and operation of human-mediated Internet-based information services. VRD organizes conferences on digital reference issues for information professionals. The Virtual Reference Experience: Integrating Theory Into Practice is a collection of papers presented at the annual VRD Conference held in San Antonio, Texas, November 17-18, 2003. The publication attempts to address the current issues and latest theories and practices behind digital reference.The recent publishing boom in books and articles about virtual reference points to its growing popularity among library users. Many of these publications are in the handbook or how to format, including one by the American Library Association entitled Going Live: Starting & Running a Virtual Reference Service. This conference publication, however, goes beyond the how-to method and explores the practical and ethical challenges facing today's practitioners. Arranged in four sections, the book addresses: patrons of virtual reference services, virtual reference librarians, virtual reference services and policies, and broader context of virtual reference.Part I describes the kinds of patrons that use virtual reference and highlights various methodologies that can be used to understand such users. Chapter 1 analyzes the findings of four surveys of users of AskERIC e-mail reference service. AskERIC is one of the first AskA services, created in 1992 as a project of the ERIC Clearinghouse on Information and Technology (part of the Educational Resources Information Center). It was a personalized Internet-based service providing education information to teachers, librarians, counselors, administrators, parents, and others interested in education throughout the United States and the world. The analysis of the surveys, which were conducted between 1998 and 2002, not only provides sample questions and ways to conduct comprehensive studies, but also describes the pitfalls of such studies and the service itself. For instance, one of the limitations of such surveys is the lack of stored data. The author warns of the problems behind deleting library data in order to prevent users' personal information from being revealed. He recommends that data collected from a digital service be anonymized by removing any information that could identify the patron or user before storing data. Although this seems good advice, it may not be practical or easy for a library to do this. It should also be noted that the AskERIC Service that was studied allowed educational researchers and practitioners to ask questions via e-mail or the Web, but was limited to asynchronous interactions. The same methodology, however, can be applied to synchronous services. Most importantly, the author warns that a longitudinal ...
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