Monday, February 20, 2012

Scripture reference database

If you're like me, you have plenty of books on your bookshelves that contain references to passages from the Bible. I'm not talking just about scriptural commentaries; I have many books, which I would classify as spiritual reading (like I'm Not Being Fed! by Jeff Cavins and The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis), that quote or refer to Scripture.

Several years ago, I compiled a list of scriptural annotations in the Catechism of the Catholic Church and made a search engine so that I could look up paragraphs of the Catechism that refer to a specific biblical passage. I also went through a couple of books with collected excerpts from the writing of Pope Benedict XVI and made the same sort of database, but never got around to using it.

But that's going to change. I've recently started writing a little library database (using the Google Books API) for my wife and myself to keep track of all the books we own. I'm taking this opportunity to create a catalog of all the scripture references in the books I read, in the same library database. I'll eventually make this available to the public.

If you're interested in helping out, leave a comment here or tweet me.