CCEL adds topical Bible search option, new formats

Summary: The Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL), which serves millions of users worldwide at www.ccel.org is now offering classic Christian literature in three new formats and has developed a one-of-a-kind topical Bible search option.

Have you ever searched the index of the Bible for specific topics like "Christmas story" or "Trinity" only to find little success? Have you ever wondered what some of the greatest minds past and present had to say about a book, a verse or a topic in the Bible?

The Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) was designed to help answer some of those questions and to provide ease of access to Christian literature for pastors, worship leaders, teachers, students and others.

The vision of Harry Plantinga, a professor of computer science at Calvin College and the director and founder of the CCEL, has evolved from merely a dream in the early 1990s to an extensive resource that currently serves millions of users in almost every country worldwide.

The CCEL contains more than 1,000 classic Christian works from authors such as Aquinas, Augustine, Benedict, Calvin, Chesterton and Edwards - including monographs, commentaries, dictionaries, encyclopedias and sermons - available in almost any format. Newly added formats include iPhone apps, Amazon Kindle books and ePub books for the iPad and other readers.

Also new to CCEL is the capability to do a "contextual" Bible search. This one-of-a-kind search capability, allows users to search for scripture passages related to terms that don't appear in the Bible, such as "Trinity" or "Christmas." This new search algorithm (http://www.ccel.org/search?category=scripture) searches all the books in the library for scripture passages that frequently appear near the search term, effectively locating related passages. It also finds references in other classic books to Bible passages.

"Our mission is to make classic Christian literature available to as many people as we can and promote its use," said Plantinga. "These new features and formats give users more ways to access this valuable resource and better tools to research Bible passages and topics on our site."

According to Google Analytics, from November 2008 to October 2009, there were 5.3 million visits to the CCEL site.

In addition to the online resource, CCEL also sends thousands of CDs and books all over the world to ministers, missionaries and interested individuals and grants permission to make additional copies of its works.

For more information on CCEL, contact its associate director Nyna Sykes at 616-526-8845, ns24@calvin.edu.
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Received on Mon Feb 8 10:30:02 2010