Pretty much decided this was a waste of my time and money. The tools in this are not keyed to the Catholic/Orthodox resources.
Another example of advertising something the software does not perform.
Very sad logos.
What do you mean?
I do not think ypou are wrong, but I would consider to add verbum one day to my library, what is the disadvantage?
Peace! And Yes, Verbum is not fully Catholic/Orthodox But it is a step in the correct direction.
Yes, set Verburm to Yes does little but it is a start. Look back about two years and see the changes.
For me it was the resource set. [I went from Plat 4 to Plat 5 and Library Builder to Capstone.]
For me the tools need to [for example] allow me to set my priorities different when I have set Verburm to Yes then when I have set Verburm to No
For example when set to NO top Bibles of KJV, ESV and when set to Yes DR, NABRE
But it is a start
Sorry you are so disappointed. I agree that it is frustrating that Logos has not yet released a Logos Controlled Vocabulary that covers the broader canon. That is a major roadblock for several of the tools. But Logos keeps reassuring us that a broader LCV is coming. It will be a major enhancement of Verbum capability. There are other limitations that I haven't heard that they are coming - an improved lectionary/reading plan system, cross-reference & parallel passages for a broader canon, topic & theme that represent Catholic/Jewish sensibilities.
However, I think we should give Logos a bit more time. I have my suspicions as to why Verbum became a separate product line. I also suspect that the LCV will be different for Verbum users than for Logos users. If my suspicions are true, giving us a more Catholic flavor would be delayed. So, I am delaying judgment on the Verbum product until Logos has time to build some of the elements needed by the liturgical churches and the Jewish users. I would ask that you do likewise. Logos does have a lot going for it.
He does have a POINT - the left hand does not know what the right hand has done [no comment intended on the meaning of left nor right]
From: http://www.logos.com/catholic
I selected products / base packages
And got to: http://www.logos.com/basepackages
[the Logos 5 page]
Rather then: http://www.logos.com/catholic#resources
[a page that will show you the Verbum sets]
Logos marketing - You've summed it up pretty well. They have a great product and marketing continually overstates the truth and sometimes completely ignore it. As it stands they have a great product to market, if only they would focus on what they do have.
Hope one day the software does meet your needs Charles. Just wish in the meantime the marketing was on the correct page.
[Y]
Fr. Matheny, I'm sorry to hear that you are disappointed with the initial Verbum products. As some others here have speculated, Verbum is a work in progress. We have released the brand line in order to have a place where we can develop the product. You will see in the short-term significant improvements in LCV coverage of Catholic resources. We are also working on solving the litrugical/lectionary shortcomings. In particular, we are working on a litrugical year datatype that will allow us to built tools that pull resources from throughout the library for a particular day or feast. Coverage of the Catholic canon will also improve across the board. Over the past year our efforts have focused on getting key Catholic resources into the format. This was the necessary pre-requisite to the development of any Catholic products. We felt the release of Logos 5 was an appropriate time to release the Verbum line. This also marks a shift in our efforts from acquiring more resources to developing the applications themselves. Over the next year you will see progressive improvements in Verbum functionality. I welcome suggestions. I can be reached 360-527-1700 x5195, or andrew.jones@logos.com.
In particular, we are working on a liturgical year datatype that will allow us to built tools that pull resources from throughout the library for a particular day or feast.
I know it can be frustrating to newer Catholic customers, to me it looks a lot different as I started with Logos in late Logos 2/early Logos 3 when there was NOTHING Catholic - no Bibles, commentaries, scholarly books, nothing. What a difference now.
It would be great if the lectionary could tie in to Butler's Lives of the Saints or the coming-soon-Roman Martyrology!
How about the Roman Missal? To tie the lectionary into today's prayers - Collect, Communion antiphon etc. would be greatly helpful in homily development and worship.
Any chance of getting the Ordo into Logos? And the Breviary(ies)? Liturgy of the Hours is such an important part of Catholic/clergy worship..
Verbum has some GREAT potential if the content can build, tagging enhanced as Andrew mentions, and tools continue to develop. I am very excited about the possibilities!
Over the next year you will see progressive improvements in Verbum functionality. I welcome suggestions.
Hi Andrew,
I would like to cast my vote again (this time a little more publically here in the forums) for the Sacra Pagina and Berit Olam Series from Litugical Press and the New Jerome Biblical Commentary.
Keep up the great work you and the Catholic team at Logos are doing!
Blessings,
Steve
I too, would like to see Sacra Pagina and Berit Olam
The expansion of the LCV will be a major step forward.
On the lectionaries please remember to make allowances for historical lectionaries and lectionaries that cover short periods of times. Having items such as Wesley's lectionary or the Huguenot lectionary will work wonders in bringing understanding of lectionaries to those not using them. There also needs to be the ability to create lectionaries on non-Biblical sources to support things such as the Orthodox reading of St. John Climacus during Lent.
Are you intending to support the multiple terminology for liturgical calendars in a way that treats them as synonyms? This is a requirement when it comes to the datatype as many of the Logos resources come from different traditions.
Very high on my list is a link to The Text This Week - far more useful that SermonCentral etc. which you've had the good sense to remove from Verbum.
Reading Plans must allow us to state specifically what passages we want so that we can build our own Reading Plan to go with devotionals & prayer books. http://community.logos.com/forums/t/63202.aspx gives a perfect example of why.
After getting the liturgical year for lectionaries (Christian and Jewish) down, the next step should be to implement the sanctoral cycle - consider examples such as the Moravian Church as sparse cycles that should be supported. Some sort of parallel comparison is needed as date of celebration are not historically as constant as we might think.
Finally, the Passage Guide needs another type of "cross-reference" section - one that shows all the texts that are used in services where the passage under study is used - Lectionary/Prayer Book/Missal and their equivalents.
That's enough to keep me happy through 2013. I'll wait to see the development on the Logos 5 side before giving you my 2014 wish list.[:D]
That is not quite completely accurate http://www.amazon.ca/Catholic-Scholars-Logos-Research-Systems was a Logos 2.0 package that did get pulled eventually when they lost the rights to sell the Jerome Biblical Commentary. But the New American Bible, New Jerusalem Bible, and Latin Vulgate all remained for sale. The Harper Bible Dictionary / Commentary also was for sale and while not exclusively catholic it covers all the catholic canon of scriptures.
That being said, Logos until recently has not seemingly gone after many catholic works.
-Dan
I know it can be frustrating to newer Catholic customers, to me it looks a lot different as I started with Logos in late Logos 2/early Logos 3 when there was NOTHING Catholic - no Bibles, commentaries, scholarly books, nothing. What a difference now. That is not quite completely accurate http://www.amazon.ca/Catholic-Scholars-Logos-Research-Systems was a Logos 2.0 package that did get pulled eventually when they lost the rights to sell the Jerome Biblical Commentary. But the New American Bible, New Jerusalem Bible, and Latin Vulgate all remained for sale. The Harper Bible Dictionary / Commentary also was for sale and while not exclusively catholic it covers all the catholic canon of scriptures. That being said, Logos until recently has not seemingly gone after many catholic works. -Dan
Yeap got one of the LL2 Catholic Librarys from a bargain bin so I could have access to Jerome.
The expansion of the LCV will be a major step forward. On the lectionaries please remember to make allowances for historical lectionaries and lectionaries that cover short periods of times. Having items such as Wesley's lectionary or the Huguenot lectionary will work wonders in bringing understanding of lectionaries to those not using them. There also needs to be the ability to create lectionaries on non-Biblical sources to support things such as the Orthodox reading of St. John Climacus during Lent. Are you intending to support the multiple terminology for liturgical calendars in a way that treats them as synonyms? This is a requirement when it comes to the datatype as many of the Logos resources come from different traditions. Very high on my list is a link to The Text This Week - far more useful that SermonCentral etc. which you've had the good sense to remove from Verbum. Reading Plans must allow us to state specifically what passages we want so that we can build our own Reading Plan to go with devotionals & prayer books. http://community.logos.com/forums/t/63202.aspx gives a perfect example of why. After getting the liturgical year for lectionaries (Christian and Jewish) down, the next step should be to implement the sanctoral cycle - consider examples such as the Moravian Church as sparse cycles that should be supported. Some sort of parallel comparison is needed as date of celebration are not historically as constant as we might think. Finally, the Passage Guide needs another type of "cross-reference" section - one that shows all the texts that are used in services where the passage under study is used - Lectionary/Prayer Book/Missal and their equivalents. That's enough to keep me happy through 2013. I'll wait to see the development on the Logos 5 side before giving you my 2014 wish list.
That's enough to keep me happy through 2013. I'll wait to see the development on the Logos 5 side before giving you my 2014 wish list.
[y]
[Y] for Text this Week link (although it covers Catholics and the Mainline denominations more than the Evangelicals and Pentacostals)
They are top priorities.
Thanks for the input and support everyone. The news for the future looks interesting as well.
I have no issues with the resources ( so happy to finally have some catholic resources somewhere in the realm of biblical software).
Glad to know there are some "fixes" coming, however, I still do believe Logos was horribly dishonest with the advertising.
Nothing, at least as far as I can tell, actually works any different with Verbum than it does with regular five. You have all already discussed the tagging/keywords etc . which explains why the guides etc. pull up the same things in Verbum as they do in 5.
My dissapointment is directly related to what has been posted, thus, I hope they do get this fixed quickly. My fear is that we, like many others recently, will find ourselves paying for upgrades in order to recieve what we thought the software was going to be doing in the first place.
I hope this is not the case, but have to admit, it would be finically lucrative for Logos.
P.S. Hope my prior post did not sound caustic as that was/is not my intention.
Glad for what I have, thankful actually!
Grace and Peace.
I still do believe Logos was horribly dishonest with the advertising.
I'll admit to rarely reading Logos advertisements.
find ourselves paying for upgrades in order to receive what we thought the software was going to be doing in the first place.
In general, I've found that this is more often a problem of perception than of fact. But one should get what one was promised.
I would like to join in acknowledging the wonderful progress by Logos in getting the software more appealing to Catholics every day; as well as the wonderful work being carried out by Andrew and others getting involved on a grass roots level (example faithlife) as well as on other levels at the same time. It must be very hard work indeed (but I can imagine it to be fun and rewarding).
There is still a lot more to be done of course. MJ's post is an excellent example of where the Verbum software itself can be enhanced to sort of make it more functional for Catholics (as well as Orthodox and other traditions)
At the same time I also have to agree with Fr. Charles on most points. But here's the catch: at play is a situation much like a chicken - egg scenario. Which comes first: a lot of Catholic customers or a totally polished and completed Catholic bible study software?
A proven market is needed to justify increasing the investments to be made on the part of Logos into the Verbum brand. The more the software is appealing to Catholics the more Catholic customers will be inclined to seriously consider investing in Logos. But at the same time, without proven results (i.e. actual number of Catholic customers increasing) there's less incentive on the part of Logos to invest time and effort into Verbum.
Hence the aggressive marketing. But care should be taken so as not to promise too much otherwise it would certainly backfire. Nothing worse than a bad word of mouth to ruin any blooming business.
Fortunately, I see Logos has got a lot to offer in and of itself to Catholics even without being too Catholic (hope that makes some sense) so much so that I would honestly recommend it to as many Catholics as I can even in its current state i.e. lack of Catholic vocabulary or crippled utilization of the lectionary types.
I too, would like to see Sacra Pagina and Berit Olam They are top priorities.
Excellent points Sleiman.
Thanks MJ. You are always very helpful.
Just be glad when things that are important catholic/ancient etc. terms, words, topics are usable search/results etc. criteria.
Blessings all.
As Catholics, we often fail to understand how our perspective of Bible study has some fundamental differences from the Evangelical perspective. It becomes harder when our "professional converts" retain strong elements of their Protestant roots. However, the Catholic perspective also applies to the Orthodox, Anglican and many Lutheran and mainstream Protestants. In many ways we have more in common with Jewish interpretation than with the Logos base. I did not really understand this until I became active in the Logos forums. a partial list of differences:
Now before everyone starts yelling at me, many of these assumptions are also applicable to groups outside those named. Not everyone inside the groups named will agree will my list ... others will add and subtract, reword and qualify my points. Many of those will be improvements on my wording or will emphasize a different aspect than I did. The point is that a truly "Catholic" product must:
Luckily, the feature that are necessary to be truly "Catholic" are also features that are useful to all Logos users. I truly believe that a mature Logos 5/Verbum product need differ only in a few defaults. Users can adjust their use of the features to reflect their understanding of scripture study.
How about the New Jerome Biblical Commentary?
It would be useful if the priorities could be set so that we did not have to re prioritize everything when we switch between Verbum and Logos. Yes, when we first start Verbum it will carry over the Logos priorities already set. But after that the priorities we set in Verbum or in Logos should not sync across. For Logos I want KJV, ESV. In Verbum I want DR, NABRE.
The Liturgy of the Hours in Latin, together with any of the official English translations (there are three of them, so hopefully at least one will give permission!).
Yes. That too.
R+
Just did a GOOGLE on both sets – One word response ‘WOW’
Both sets go for $30 to $50 per volume
Sacra Pagina: About 18 volumes– set goes for $500 in paperback $700 in hard copy [what will be the Verbum price $150 or so?]
Berit Olam: did not find a listing for the whole set butis about 13 volumes [what will be the Verbum price $120 or so?]
And Yes, they should be in any complete catholic library
