數位佛典=Digital Buddhist Canon; 中華電子佛典協會=Chinese Buddhist Electronic Text Association (CBETA); 資料庫=database; 佛教研究=Buddhist studies; 數位研究平台=digital research platform
摘要
隨著數位技術的推展，許多重要的文獻典籍皆陸續的被數位化，提供人文研究在資料使用上的便利。佛教文獻除了具有學術研究上的需求與價值之外，更有著傳遞教義的目標。因此自1990年代初期開始，佛典數位化的工作便陸續展開。其中一個十分成功的項目，就是由中華電子佛典協會（Chinese Buddhist Electronic Text Association, CBETA）所推出的CBETA電子佛典集成，由於該資料庫的內容豐富且品質優良，現今已成為研究漢傳佛教不可或缺的資料來源。但多年來，CBETA電子佛典集成程式只能運行於單一電腦系統，並僅以資料閱讀為主，少有提供相關研究工具。為提供研究者更多在使用上與研究上的方便，我們與中華電 子佛典協會攜手進行CBETA數位研究平臺開發。本文將以此研究平臺之成果為重點，說明平臺功能、相關技術與未來發展。
In recent years, with the rapid development of information technology, a substantial number of Chinese Buddhist scriptures have been converted to digital format and made available to the public. The Chinese Buddhist Electronic Text Association (CBETA) has made the Chinese Electronic Tripiṭaka Collection widely available for many years and provided a resourceful platform for the Chinese Buddhist texts studies. As of the 2016 version, more than 210 million Chinese characters are freely and publicly available in digital form through the efforts of the CBETA. With the rapid emergence of digital tools, the employment of digital resources for the extraction of implicit information in the texts is a promising methodology. Owing to the privation of high-level computer programming skills and advanced statistical knowledge, the quantitative analysis of digital texts still under-perform. Therefore, there is a barrier for humanities scholars to navigate these digital tools, not to mention the application of such research concept in the field of Chinese Buddhist texts studies. It is inevitable to create a platform that assists humanities scholars in overcoming the mentioned hindrances so that the computational linguistic resources and information technology could aid in their research effort. Hence, the establishment of ＂CBETA Research Platform＂ started. This research platform provides high-quality digital content from the CBETA corpus, combining relevant references based on the latest research findings.
