An Interview with Dr. Helen Brown of OakTree Software, of Accordance Bible Software

January 4, 2011

Dr. Helen Brown, an anesthesiologist by training, is one of the people who helped to create “Accordance Bible Software,” a series of programs which have become an invaluable tool for students, teachers and scholars in the world of Jewish studies and beyond. She recently took some time to answer a few questions about Accordance via email, for the New Villna Review.

NVR: For our readers who may not have heard of Accordance, can you give us a brief description of what the software has to offer users?

Accordance is primarily designed to help users study the texts of the Bible and related texts, and to access dictionaries, commentaries, and other books which assist in that study. It makes it easy to read the text along with translations in parallel. Many texts are "tagged" with additional information about the underlying words, and Accordance presents that information easily and unobtrusively, and allows searches based on that information, as well as on the words and phrases themselves. In Accordance the user can select a word or phrase in any resource and search for it in any other resource, or his entire library, with a couple of clicks.

NVR: Who is Accordance designed for? Who will find the software useful?

Accordance is designed for anyone who wants to study the text of the Bible, Mishna, Dead Sea Scrolls, etc., whether in English or the original languages. In practice we find that most of our users are teachers or students who find that it helps them grapple with the languages and texts in unprecedented ways, and prepare their lessons or papers. Parents also buy the software to teach their children or study for themselves.

NVR: What inspired the creation of Accordance? How has the program changed since it first became available?

The idea of doing the first Mac Bible program was planted in our minds in the mid 80's when we lived in Israel. It developed to the point of displaying the Hebrew text, but it was sold by our partners to another company. After a short hiatus we began to explore the idea of a program that could handle complex searches of the fully tagged texts with an easy to use interface. Accordance was released in 1994 with many of the core search and display capabilities already in place.

Since then it has matured and developed in many ways. It has kept pace with advances in software and hardware, and spawned a version for the iPad and other iOS devices. It has expanded to a wide range of non-Biblical texts, and original languages such as Syriac. It has added the "tools" such as commentaries and lexicons, interactive maps and a timeline, graphic rich dictionaries and atlases, which are all fully integrated with the texts and each other. It has stayed at the cutting edge of advanced searching such as fuzzy and infer searches, and grammatical syntax.

NVR: You recently came out with a new version of Accordance – what are some of the features that users can expect to find on this latest version?

Our users have loved the new features we added in Version 9. Flexible Zones organize the contents of a workspace so that lexicons and graphs, for example, can be viewed alongside the text. Easy Install lets them download almost any modules immediately and directly — no disks, no installers, no unlock codes. Syntactical analysis and searching is a new and ongoing project. The Search All is much faster with quicker results viewing and easier creation of groups of modules.

NVR: One of the challenges that would-be users of this software face is that the program does not run as well on PC’s as it does on Mac’s – are there any plans to create a more PC-friendly version of Accordance?

We have always developed on Mac since it enables us to produce the best Bible software that just works, without harassing the user. I agree that the PC emulator of a 15 year old Mac system is not nearly as satisfying to use, and is becoming more problematic with the newer Windows systems (though we do have workarounds). However, it is no simple matter to develop for a completely different system. I hope that we will have a true Windows version in the future, but it isn't in our immediate plans.

NVR: Can you tell us a little about your own background and how you came to be involved with Accordance?

My background is far from Bible software, though I have always had an interest in the Bible. I am actually a physician, was raised in the UK, and specialized in anesthesia after Army service in Israel. My involvement with Accordance has grown over the last 20 years as I handled the peripheral tasks like fonts, manuals, brochures, and website, in order to free up the developers to focus on the software itself and the associated texts. It has been thrilling to see how this software has empowered students and teachers all over the world.

NVR: What new features can Accordance users expect to see in future editions of the program?

Well, we don't normally publish our plans for the software since we hate to peddle "vaporware." I can tell you that we have big plans for Accordance for iOS on the iPad, so that it will go beyond the current reading and searching of modules to allow the kinds of interaction between modules that I described above. We also plan to expand the syntax to the entire Bible and to some other ancient texts. There is a long list of planned features which will keep Accordance at the cutting edge of Bible software, but I am not at liberty to share them all with you.

NVR: Is there anything else you would like to add?

I hope that you will visit our website and watch some videos or podcasts to see this unique software in action. You can find them at www.accordancebible.com.

This interview has been edited for clarity and format. Copyright 2011 the New Vilna Review.