1205 SELECT just got a whole lot better!
austraLasia 1205

SELECT just got a whole lot better!

ROME: 20 July 2005 --  SELECT, a bilingual dictionary and thesaurus of approximately 1,000 terms in use by Salesians, can now be rapidly searched from its home page for all terms, and approximately 90% of these also contain a link to a text from the Salesian magisterium, beginning from Don Bosco himself.  In fact where a term was used by Don Bosco, the link is to one of his texts in almost every case.
    As far as one can see, there is not a similar resource in the entire range of 'salesiana', at least not one where you can easily access some 245 original texts.  The downside will be for those who cannot read Italian, of course.  The texts will be of little value to such a person, but the explanation of the term, which is easily accessible via the SELECT homepage, is in English and should suffice for most purposes.  For those who can read Italian, the term may be easily identified in context using your browser's 'search/find' facility once the text has opened in front of you.
    SELECT is now at version 3, and has jumped from somewhere around 50 Mb to 150 Mb in size.  Version 4, which is at the planning stage and some months away still, will contain the same range of texts but in English.
    The entire 'web', for that is what it is, sits on the www.sdb.org server and can be accessed via that route by going to 'resources' then to 'animation notes', but by far the easiest way to access SELECT is to go via www.bosconet.aust com and simply click on the SELECT icon at the top of the page.
    Behind the the homepage, and accessible by clicking on the Salesian logo or thereabouts, is a wealth of other information on selected terms, or studies of important Salesian concepts.
    SELECT has been trialled on a number of browsers. 
IE offers no difficulties. Some browsers (Firefox, Opera...) may or may not show up the separate links to texts under each term entry. The author would be keen to hear from anyone in that situation - and if you really wanted a copy for yourself and were not prepared to download 150 Mb's worth (a big ask for any bandwidth) you could request a personal copy on CD.  It may be possible in a future version to overcome the problem with certain browsers once we have identified the root cause of the problem.
    Meanwhile, the work goes on and SELECT is constantly being modified, improved, added to.  If you have additional terms or additional useful information or corrections, please do not hesitate to offer them.

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