Announcing the DQC-QBI Kit

   I think my presentation yesterday about the Digital Quaker Collection and the Quaker Bible Index went well. Then I went home and made up a kind of "kit" out of it, that any Friend (with some familiarity with using the DQC and the QBI) is welcome to use to make a similar presentation at their own Meeting. Here it is:
   My approximately 45-minute hybrid presentation at West Richmond Friends Meeting began with an account of how I found the “Browse by Author” utility in Earlham School of Religion’s Digital Quaker Collection (DQC) daunting, and so created “A Simplified Index to the Digital Quaker Collection” with a view to helping others find their way to the old books and tracts they might want to access. (The Simplified Index, though still a work in progress, is now published online at https://among.wordpress.com/a-simplified-index-to-the-digital-quake....)
   A how-to sheet then walks the searcher of the _Works_ of George Fox in the DQC through the process (using the DQC's "Search" function) of finding out where Fox wrote his famous advice to “walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in every one.” It’s in his 1656 “Exhortation to Friends in the Ministry,” a handout of which is included in this packet.
   Another how-to sheet describes how to find that elusive quote from Scripture — “now where does the Bible say ‘love your enemies?’” — using the Searchable King James Bible on the University of Michigan Library website. Once “love your enemies” has been located (at Matthew 5:44 and Luke 6:27), another handout shows how the Quaker Bible Index (QBI) gathers quotations from early Quaker writers that illustrate what uses (exegetic or protreptic) they made of Jesus' command to love our enemies.
   A final handout provides a preview of a biblical verse (Colossians 1:13) that has not yet been added to the Main Scripture Indexes of the Quaker Bible Index, showing how early Quaker writers made use of the announcement that God "hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear son."
   Finally: — Yes, you can! If you've ever been moved by reading George Fox, or John Woolman, or Margaret Fell, or Isaac Penington, you can easily fill 45 minutes witnessing to the value of early Friends' writings for modern Friends, while you walk your listeners through learning the use of these research tools!
   HANDOUTS (available in PDF format on request, if you give me your email address):
• A Simplified Index to the Digital Quaker Collection (11 pp.)
• Find It in the Works of George Fox (1 p.)
• George Fox, “An Exhortation to Friends in the Ministry” (1 p.)
• Find It in the King James Bible (1 p.)
• Early Quaker References to Antitheses 5 and 6 in the Sermon on the Mount, as displayed in the QBI (2 pp.)
• Four Pages on Deliverance and Translation, from the QBI for Colossians 1:13 (4 pp.)
— John Jeremiah Edminster, 5/9/2022