I would like a setting in the ancient literature tab on the Passage Guide to only show resources in my library. This would be consistent with other sections of the PG.
Thanks for listening
From my understanding I don't think this is planned to change
The intention is that links to all data will be shown - if you hover over a link you will see a popup if you own the resource.
If you don't get a popup you don't own the resource. In that case, clicking on the link will open a Power Lookup panel with an option to purchase an appropriate resource.
Graham,
Thanks for the reply. This is inconsistent with the other sections of the PG. I prefer my library resources be the target of the PG. However, if that is how it will be then I can live with it. Imagine the commentary section opening and showing links to all the commentaries I do not own.
Imagine the commentary section opening and showing links to all the commentaries I do not own.
That would be rather unhelpful.
I think - and could easily be wrong - is that part of the difference is in how the sections are generated.
The commentary section is done using a search against a set of commentaries you own whereas the information regarding ancient literature is generated from a search which has been put together by a team in Faithlife and is common to everyone.
The difference between this section and others is that this section isn't calculated from your library, but from a database that Logos have created themselves. That's great because it gives us more data.
For example, an edition of Augustine's Confessions might contain a particular cross-reference that shows up in your passage guide. If the data was calculated from your resources, you'd only see this cross-reference if you owned that particular edition. But this way, you can see the cross-reference even if you don't (which you don't like, I know), but you can also see it and open it in another edition that you do own (which you probably do like!). If Logos only calculated the links from our own resources, we'd lose that benefit.
Of course, it's theoretically possible to hide cross-references that we can't open. But I think this would be very computationally expensive, as Logos would effectively have to attempt to open every cross reference to see what happens, every time we run the report.
I upgraded to the Diamond package - but when I look for ancient literature or cultural concept I get "no results". What am I doing wrong or what do I not have that has to be a part of the Logos 6 to use these two areas.
I upgraded to the Diamond package - but when I look for ancient literature or cultural concept I get "no results"
Where are you looking for these - in a PG?
If so:
Probably need to make sure it finishes indexing.
I upgraded to the Diamond package - but when I look for ancient literature or cultural concept I get "no results".
It should work with Diamond.
After Logos 6 runs for the first time, it should download a bunch of datasets that provide this functionality. Only after those downloads have installed and indexed, the features should work. (That is they won't work the first time you run L6.) Have you had those updates yet?
Mark and Graham,
I understand. Thanks for the replies.
Hi John.
This is basically the reason. Ancient Literature stores a series of datatype references with the relation between the Bible reference and the non-Bible reference classified. They aren't targeted to a particular resource. That way the links to Apostolic Fathers resources work with whatever verison of that resource you prefer (Lightfoot, Lake, Holmes, or Brannan? English, Greek, or German?). Same for Josephus and Philo (English or Greek?) and OT Pseudepigrapha (Charles, or Charlesworth? English or Greek?).
To not display links with no direct target, each link would need to validate on load for a given users library. That would be computationally expensive.
There may be some enhancements we could make in the future, like remembering whether a given 'work' subsection is expanded or collapsed in the Work view. That was suggested during the beta phase, and I've passed that on to our designers. No promises on that, though; we'll see.
Thanks Rick,
I now understand and am good with hovering to determine if I have the resource.
Great work on 6! I am really enjoying the new features and datasets.
Are you using a Passage Guide that you've customised? If so, you'll need to right-click on your customised Guide, select "Edit Guide Template" and add these two sections to it. They should appear automatically in the standard Passage Guide. I only offer this suggestion because I spent a good half hour looking for these sections myself before remembering that the PG I use is one that I customised (I have a section on commentaries that only shows those listed in the top 5 on the Bestcommentaries.com website for each Bible book as well as a couple of other customisations).
Great. Would it be helpful to remember expanded/collapsed sections? I need to get a feel of how hard (or not) to push for this feature to be implemented.
Glad to hear it!
I would like a setting in the ancient literature tab on the Passage Guide to only show resources in my library. This would be consistent with other sections of the PG. Thanks for listening
As it stands, a setting for this is marked as an open design question for an unspecified future release. If you feel strongly about it, http://logos.uservoice.com is a great way to gather interest in the cause.
Another approach would be to style the hyperlinks differently: Blue for resources you own, gray for ones you don't. (Any votes for that?)
In the meantime, we decided that since it's a curated dataset (not calculated from your resources on the fly) and you paid for ALL the references when you bought it, showing them all would be best.
We're definitely listening. Thanks for the feedback!
I'd vote for it, but the technical difficulties are too great for it to be worthwhile (IMO).
Another reason to show all the links is some users may have access to the resources outside of Logos, either in paper, pdf, or other format.
Quite so. The reason we didn't do this is that it would have slowed down drawing the section considerably while we tested all those links for valid destinations.
I'd vote for it, but the technical difficulties are too great for it to be worthwhile (IMO). Quite so. The reason we didn't do this is that it would have slowed down drawing the section considerably while we tested all those links for valid destinations.
Would it be reasonable to consider drawing open or closed padlocks on a second pass? If it has the same time debit I may prefer just leaving it as is.
I view the Ancient Literature section as a reference book rather than a library search - as such it also helps me with dead tree resources not available in my Logos. I would not like to see the results limited by my library. I would, however, like to see it remember collapse/expand state.
I vote for whatever keep Logos running fast.
Would it be helpful to remember expanded/collapsed sections? I need to get a feel of how hard (or not) to push for this feature to be implemented.
I would, however, like to see it remember collapse/expand state.
I'm definitely on board with this. Remembering a state is key for ease of access. I can't fathom it adding much overhead either.
Absolutely. I think this is a great feature, and will save hours in trying to track down references. I would prefer it to continue showing items that aren't in my library, so that I can go to a dead-tree library and check them out there: it is also useful for those of us who need to provide citations at times - the fact I don't have the book doesn't mean I don't want to cite it (after checking out the original in a D-T library, of course).
This Ancient Literature feature is the one I'm most excited about in Logos 6. It will be a great help for my ministry and studies in the future. I am most impressed with the "Allusions" feature, since that will bring up parallel passages that don't even use the same wording. Well done. Too bad the Catholic edition of the Church Fathers is so expensive, as many of the links go to that resource.
However, based on my limited time with it, the Ancient Literature feature seems to be really incomplete. For example, I'm looking at the data given for Romans 9:3.
From this verse, Logos gives three quotations and a bunch of other allusions. Why only three?
Here is what Bibleworks 9 spits out for the same verse, while only looking at the references to Romans 9:3 in Schaff's Early Church Fathers. In other words, a very limited search for cross-references.
If the new Ancient Literature database was hard coded to find mere references to Romans 9:3 given in the footnotes to Schaff's Church Fathers, then it should have every one of these, but it doesn't. Why not? Why only three quotations across all patristics?
Also, I already do not trust the data that the Ancient Literature database gives. Up above, one of the three quotations given was Jerome's Adv. Helv. 14. It's not there. It's in section 16. I found this error only because I found the correct reference using Bibleworks. But Logos 6 doesn't allow me to submit a typo for this.
Will this feature be seeing regular updates to make it more exhaustive and accurate? I was hoping for it to be my one-stop-shop for cross-references, but it will be merely one place among many that I will go for my research.
Hi Brian.
If the new Ancient Literature database was hard coded to find mere references to Romans 9:3 given in the footnotes to Schaff's Church Fathers, then it should have every one of these, but it doesn't. Why not?
The Ancient Literature is not a concordance of existing references tagged in ECF. That can be done with a search and a collection with relative ease.
Because a reference occurs somewhere does not mean that it has been quoted or alluded to. Especially in the ECF footnotes (and it varies from vol to vol even then), it means that an editor thought there was some relevance of some sort with the present selection. It doesn't mean the author of the original was citing or quoting it.
If you want a concordance of a particular reference or reference range in ECF (or any collection of resources), the best way is to use the existing 'Collection' feature in Passage Guide. Create a collection for ECF (though you may already have one) and use it in the Guide:
Ancient Literature data on Church Fathers is derived from material in the Fathers of the Church series (here: https://www.logos.com/product/33665/fathers-of-the-church-series) as well the ECF series. We also use Catena Aurea (here: https://www.logos.com/product/5216/catena-aurea-commentary-on-the-four-gospels) and even analysis of ACCS material. Basically we're making a network of citations for further analysis (this 'further analysis' is what the Ancient Literature dataset provides) where we can abstractly represent both the Bible reference and the Church Fathers reference. Then we analyze the pair and provide a relationship describing how one reference is likely related to the other reference. We're looking at places in commentaries where there are links to church fathers writings, we're looking at church fathers' writings where there are links to the Bible.
Because we have different editions of several of the writings of the church fathers (FOTC, ECF Protestant Edition, ECF Catholic Edition; with ACW (hopefully) coming) we use the author-based data type milestones (not Bible milestones) in the resource to provide the church father reference point. So at present we restrict the analysis to things that we can provide data type links for on both sides. ECF has several volumes that have this degree of milestone implementation, but some that do not. Using these provides the greatest flexibiilty for users of all of these different editions.
In the Jerome case you mention, we have a problem of different editions (FOTC, ECF Protestant & Catholic) using slightly different numbering schemes. In the FOTC edition of Jerome, the reference is in §14; in ECF it is in §16. Same text, differently numbered.
We do want to constantly improve this data, and your feedback will help us do that. So thanks for this report.
During the beta phase, we improved and expanded the data — specifically for Church Fathers — a number of times. But there is a distinct difference between what the references in Ancient Literature report, and what a search by reference of a collection report. The Ancient Literature references sift out a lot of references that *might* be valid in some way, and hope to keep and classify those that are — particularly for Church Fathers, which are classified in an automated fashion. With other report corpora (Josephus, Philo, Dead Sea Scrolls Sectarian, OT Pseudepigrapha, Apostolic Fathers, NT Apocrypha) each reference's relationship is hand-curated. Other datasets (Judaica, Nag Hammadi material) consulted material where relationship determinations are relatively secure and could be done in an automated fashion.
So I'd say use both Ancient Literature and the Collection section of the Passage Guide. If you want every place a particular Bible reference is tagged so you can follow up on everything, then the Collection section is your friend. If you want a curated list, with relationship information about why a particular reference is there, then hit Ancient Literature (particularly for coropra outside of Church Fathers).
If you have further items you want to report regarding Ancient Literature, you may email me directly: rick at faithlife dot com.
Thanks again for your feedback.
Hi Rick, thank you for your detailed response about how the Ancient Literature database works. That makes a lot of sense to see it as a curated resource. That is quite a lot of effort to approve each one of these by hand! I am very appreciative all your hard work. I will follow your tip with the Collections subsection in the Passage Guide to get a non-curated selection.
Do you ever foresee soliciting user help for improving this database? Something akin to the typo submit function? For instance, how would this ECF §16 discrepancy be corrected if I had not brought it up on the forum?
Not sure, to be honest. That's why I left you my email address, and you should feel free to contact me about this data. It is (relatively) new, and I want to make sure we get the right stuff in there to make it the best it can be.
Right now I'm writing some code to see if we can review the ECF stuff a little more critically and help it to play a larger role in the data that comes through. In that case, it might be that both references (14 and 16) could be listed. Better to have both (1 + 1 = 1?) than to miss half the time (probably more than half since more users have ECF than FOTC).
Thanks again.
This Ancient Literature feature is the one I'm most excited about in Logos 6
Seriously, the Ancient Literature feature is incredibly useful for those of us who are trying to understand how Scriptures were understood in the ancient world.
I never use the Passage Guide, but this feature will change my workflow. :-)
Is it possible to do Milestone Search with Ancient Literature? Something like {Milestone <AncientLiterature Gen 1:1>}, for example; or a section search.
This is the only way that I know how.
Thanks for your reply.
Elias, have you tried creating a collection of all the resources that you have that fit the category of Ancient Literature and running a search on it?
Yes. I know I can do it that way. I was just wondering if there is way of doing a direct search. Any way, since this does not seem to be possible, I’ll keeping using the passage guide or may create a collection with the appropriate resources.
You can do a Milestone search with any resource that uses milestones. But what would you be expecting {Milestone <AncientLiterature Gen 1:1>} to produce? That's the wrong syntax, but to give you the correct syntax, I need to know what you're expecting.
I know it is the wrong syntax; it was just for the sake of illustration. That is, to find a particular Bible reference in ancient sources, Gen 1:1, for example. Since Literary Typing and Culture work very well with section search, I thought there might be something like that in ancient sources. Something like {Section <AncientSources Gen 1:1>} (This is just an illustration, I do not expect it to work). I know I can do this kind of search through passage guide or through a collection with the pertinent resources.
Alternately, if all you want is the Ancient Literature data, you could make a custom guide with just the Ancient Literature section, and use it instead of the full passage guide.
That’s a very good suggestion. Thanks.
