The OSIS 2.1.1 schema was issued March 5, 2006 with the following comments.

Welcome to the OSIS 2.1.1 schema for encoding biblical literature! A number of changes, which are detailed in the Users Manual, were made to accomodate publishing needs more easily.

The OSIS family of schemas is definitely a work in progress and is supported by both the American Bible Society and the Society of Biblical Literature, with additional contributions from the United Bible Societies and SIL International, as well as tireless efforts of numerous volunteers. While freely available for all purposes, it is requested that use of the schemas be acknowledged as appropriate and that problems or suggestions for improvements be forwarded to the project.

The OSIS schemas were written by a small core of technical and content experts who volunteered large blocks of time for this project: Steve DeRose (sderose@acm.org), chair of the Bible Technologies Group (co-sponsored by the ABS and SBL), Kees De Blois (kdeblois@solcon.nl), vice-chair of the Bible Technologies Group, Troy Griffitts (scribe@crosswire.org), Chris Little (chrislit@crosswire.org), Todd Tillinghast (todd@contentframeworks.com), Harry Plantinga (hplantin@calvin.edu), Kirk Lowery (klowery@wts.edu), and Patrick Durusau (Patrick@durusau.net), Technical Lead.

Outside of the core technical team, special thanks go to Adina Hamik (ABS), Bob Hodgson (ABS), John Walter (ABS) and Mike Perez (eABS) for their organization of both domestic and international meetings of the OSIS project and their unflagging support for its efforts.

While the history of the OSIS project is ongoing, users should be aware of the pivotal role of Dennis Drescher (Dennis_Drescher@sil.org) in his organization of a breakfast meeting at XML 2000 on Bible encoding that lead to the formation of the Bible Technologies Group and hence the OSIS project. Other contributors from SIL include, Eric Albright (eric-allison_albright@sil.org), Peter Constable (peter_constable@sil.org), John Edwards (John_Edwards@sil.org), Darrell Eppler (Darrell_Eppler@sil.org), Nathan Miles (Nathan_Miles@sil.org), and, Jim DeVries (jim_devries@sil.org).

The fundamental goal of the OSIS project is to provide a common format that supports multiple visions of and purposes for Bibles and related texts. By pooling the interests of the wide variety of communities interested in biblical texts, the OSIS project seeks to provide the basis for tools and texts that will benefit all of these diverse communities.

The lastest version of the OSIS schema and user documentation can always be found at: http://www.bibletechnologies.org and comments can be forewarded to the OSIS Technical Editors, Patrick Durusau, Patrick@durusau.net or Steve DeRose, sderose@acm.org.