Title:A Picture Is Worth..

A Picture is Worth...

THEOLOGICAL STUDY IS VERY MUCH TEXTUALLY BASED; SOMETIMES, HOWEVER, A PICTURE IS WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS (OR MORE)

Study at the seminary usually begins with summer Greek (or fall Greek)-and from then on, seminary students immerse themselves in texts: the text of the Greek New Testament, the text of the Hebrew Old Testament, and the texts of their readings for class.

Despite this emphasis on texts, there are times when a visual aid can be especially valuable. And for some people, whose mode of learning is primarily visual, having visual aids around much of the time enhances learning. This month, we look at some of the many items in Walther Library whose focus is visual or oral.

When it comes to sign language, a picture probably is worth a thousand words. Walther Library has a video on Lingustics of American Sign Language and a video of The Life of Christ, featuring selections from the synoptic Gospels in American Sign Language. And if descriptions of vaulted arches and flying buttresses leave you cold, you can view actual medieval cathedrals, including the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris (not to be confused with the alma mater of the seminary's president) on the video Cathedral.

Unless you are a trained linguist, a description of the sounds of a language will not help you learn to speak the language. When you combine sounds of the language with scenes from daily life, you have a very enjoyable way to learn a language. You can try Bideo koza Nihongo for Japanese-just look for the seven videos labeled in Japanese-and Virgil Goes to China for Chinese. If your tastes are in the European realm instead of the far East, you can watch and listen The German Programme for GCSE, The Spanish Programme for Secondary Schools, or The French Programme for Secondary Schools. Finally, you can learn a little bit more about your own language and the reasons you hear a wide variety of English spoken even on our campus with the PBS series The Story of English.

The cassette section of the library has many helps for language learning, for such languages as Finnish, Arabic, Hindi, German-and for something entirely different, Gaelic. Recorded versions of the New Testament are available in a wide variety of lan-guages, including Hebrew, Spanish, Korean, German, and Tagalog. For anyone interested in listening to the Greek New Testament, the entire Nestle text is avail-able on cassettes. You can also find many recorded Lutheran Hour tapes in this section of the library, as well as recordings of past symposia (confessions, exegetical, and liturgical) and missions congresses.

Computer software is another supplement to our text collections. A number of the CD-ROMs we have simply help you search text databases, but this can be a great time-saver. The library has CD-ROMs with texts ranging from the Bible and early church fathers to the Talmud. We even have a CD-ROM with Luther's complete works-but wait, there's a catch. The entire disk is in Finnish. (Here's an idea: You can check out the language-learning tapes mentioned above, learn Finnish, then have access to Luther's complete works in a searchable format! But then again...) Other CD-ROMs in the library's collection let you see and hear history with the Middle Ages or The Thirty Years' War. The Dead Sea Scrolls Revealed gives you a chance to learn about Qumran with sight and sound. And the 20:21 Library has missions and evangelism data on a CD-ROM. Watch for many new exciting CD-ROMs in the library as we expand the offerings in the library itself (with the possibility of checking some of them out) and on the library network.

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