Publications

 

ASIR: Advances in the Study of Information and Religion

ASIR: Advances in the Study of Information and Religion is an online, open access publication available on the Kent State University Libraries website and cataloged on OhioLINK. It contains select papers from the annual Conference on Information and Religion, hosted by the Center for the Study of Information and Religion in the School of Library and Information Science at Kent State University.

• 2012

• 2011

 

Sermon Content Review (SCR)

The CSIR Sermon Content Review (SCR) is a bi-monthly snapshot of themes, topics, references, illustrations, and interpretations included in a small, convenience sampling of sermon texts prepared and delivered by clergy members primarily from mainline Protestant denominations across the country. The goal of these snapshots is to provide early indications of potential patterns and clues regarding the use of information in sermons and the role of sermons in the broader social conversation and the construction of knowledge that occurs in communities of worship.

The sermon texts are collected on a regular basis from public blogs and congregational web sites on which clergy members post their sermon texts on a weekly basis. CSIR maintains a list of these blog and websites on the Sermon Texts Posting Sites Index (STPSI). STPSI includes links to each of the sermon texts posting sites along with the name of the clergy member, the name of the congregation he or she serves, and the city and state in which the congregation is located.

The intent of the SCR is to facilitate research in a variety of academic disciplines related to religion and information science. The monthly report covers frequency distributions of scripture texts; references to current issues, events and phenomena; trending words, phrases and concepts used in the sermon texts; citations of information resources and more. It was developed by CSIR primary researcher Dan Roland, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the university’s School of Library and Information Science.

The CSIR Sermon Content Review is published on a separate blog: http://csir-scr.blogspot.com/.