I appreciate being reminded that I have these resources available, but instead of repeating the journal description for each specific issue but rather presenting the abstract from the lead article or the first paragraph from the specific issue's forward would be a welcome edit.
I don't know if this is how all journals are presented in home page blurbs; Semeia is the only one I have noticed.
If this is not a simple change, then a frequency based on the journal being part of my library rather than a frequency based on the number of issues in the library would be nice. The blurb for Semeia 55 should be not be identical to that of other issues.
Instead of reading
Semeia is an experimental journal devoted to the exploration of new and emergent areas and methods of biblical criticism. Studies employing the methods, models, and findings of linguistics, folklore studies, contemporary literary criticism, structuralism, social anthropology, and other such disciplines and approaches, are invited. Although experimental in both form and content, Semeia proposes to publish work that reflects a well defined methodology that is appropriate to the material being ...
I would read,
The essays in this issue are part of the product of a remarkable conversation that has taken place in the Q Seminar (1983–89) of the Society of Biblical Literature. Since its inception, the work of the seminar has had two quite distinct foci: on the one hand, the establishing of a critical text of Q, and on the other, the discussion of various literary critical, tradition-historical and social-historical ...
or
The Sayings Gospel Q has occupied a position at the thresholds and transition points of NT scholarship. Harnack’s publication of the text of Q signaled a shift in method with respect to the way in which external (patristic) testimony was to be valued in relation to internal textual data. For Harnack and now for Mack, the Sayings Gospel affords an important alternative to an apocalyptically defined portrait of Jesus, while for Bultmann, Q served ...
Perhaps the first sentence of the current blurb could remain, if that is more the editorial policy of home page blurbs for journals.
I agree with you Ed this would be much more useful. Unfortunately the home page is showing what was entered into the description field of the resource. For Semeia, when these files were created, whoever did them was lazy and just put the same text into the description field for each issue, rather than putting a summary of the contents of that issue. The same information appears to be pulled into the details section of a products webpage. So what you are suggesting would not only make what is shown on the home page more useful but also what potentially would be shown on the web site and the description of the resource itself. I too would like to see more useful information in all three of these places.