Comments on: SBL Program Book Went POOF!

By: Patrick George McCullough

Patrick George McCullough — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 16:16:51 +0000

Sounds like a healthy assessment, Judy.

Hi Edward, I didn’t think they were dissing me and I am pretty well relaxed–as much as a Ph.D. student and a father of a fussy four month old can be. Though, I do appreciate your concern for my mental well being

By: Edward Pothier

Edward Pothier — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 14:46:36 +0000

PGM commented: “So, Collins is not contacting bloggers in general, but simply responding to one blogger who contacted him.”

So you can relax! SBL is not diss’ing you and your blog by not asking you to remove program content info.

By: Judy Redman

Judy Redman — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 11:36:51 +0000

I imagine that SBL doesn’t want people to be drawing conclusions about when they will be presenting and with whom from a preliminary program book because if there are any changes made, there is a high risk of confusion. Probably they made a mistake in putting it up so that it was in a publicly accessible part of the site rather than simply being accessible to people whose role it was to check that it looked OK. They assumed that since it wasn’t actually linked from the main site, people wouldn’t be able to find it. Clearly, however, people with some idea of how SBL conference websites are set up can find these things without links.

By: Patrick George McCullough

Patrick George McCullough — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 15:06:27 +0000

Ah, I see. Thanks for the clarification, Tommy. That makes sense. So, Collins is not contacting bloggers in general, but simply responding to one blogger who contacted him.

At least we know now why they locked it down.

See you in The Big Easy!

By: tommy wasserman

tommy wasserman — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 06:42:42 +0000

Dear Patrick, I think it was strange that the SBL made the program available even if they did not provide the link. I got the link from Nijay Gupta’s blog and had no idea that SBL took offense, especially not since the page indicated “preliminary program book”. I contacted Collins myself because I found an error in the program, and then he asked me how I could have searched the program, and he asked me to remove it. I just left a brief explanation on my blog, since others link to the post. In the end, I am glad that the SBL restricted access to the page if they don’t want the information to come out. I have the same respect as you for the organization and I am a chair of a program unit at the ISBL.

See you in New Orleans!

By: Jorwed

Jorwed — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 20:50:14 +0000

This (at least partly) explains what’s going on: http://evangelicaltextualcriticism.blogspot.com/2009/04/sbl-2009-annual-meeting-preliminary.html