re: Resources needed for Noet Scholarly Tools
Many books in the Noet Catalog have search capability descriptors similar to the following:
"Modern Library ranked Ulysses as the most important English-language novel of the twentieth century."
"The Noet edition of this volume is fully indexed and tagged, allowing for near-instant search results. Use the dictionary lookup tool to dig deeper in to Joyce’s novel use of English words. The books are linked with the rest of your library, allowing you to look up literary and historical allusions with a click."
I have over 7,000 volumes in my Logos/Verbum/Noet library. The Concise Oxford English Dictionary is the sole reference provided with the Noet Literature Research Library. In addition, I already had many other dictionaries in my L/V/N library. I still found it necessary to purchase the complete and unabridged Collins English Dictionary to improve the word look up performance.
I am very enthusiast about the described ability to look up literary and historical allusions with a click. I have print copies of Ulysses Annotated; Musical Allusions in the Works of James Joyce; James Joyce's Odyssey:A guide to the Dublin of Ulysses; SparkNotes Ulysses; Mythic Worlds, Modern Words: On The Art of James Joyce; and even The Joyce of Cooking. I have in print and L/V/N library Homer's Odyssey and Shakespeare's Hamlet which are both frequently alluded to by Joyce in Ulysses.
There are thousands of allusions in Ulysses (almost 700 musical allusions, alone). I have had very little success in looking up these allusions in Noet. I scoured the Noet and Logos catalogs and found very few currently available resources that would adequately support allusion searches. I found several very dated (perfect in this case) encyclopedias and dictionaries in Pre Pub and Community Pricing that should improve search success dramatically. I put in preorders and bids, accordingly.
I can't help but wonder what resources were available when the Noet description of search capabilities "with a click" for Ulysses (and many other Noet books) were written. I can keep a separate Google search window open alongside Noet -plug in the word or phrase- and achieve very consistent success. This method is almost as slow and cumbersome as using print resources.
I have dabbled with the study of Ulysses on and off for almost 20 years. Using the print resources is very time consuming. I love the "...with a click" concept. Hovering with popup floating window would be great, too. Also, it would be awesome if audio was available for the music snippets and musical allusions. I'd definitely subscribe to a Noet Now for these possibilities.
Dear Noet, Please tell me what resources are needed to make the described allusion search capability function with a click. Thank you!
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My attempts to obtain an answer about allusion searches of fictional works in the forums and by phone and email have been unsuccessful
I posted the following on January 26 regarding the advertised Noet allusion search capabilities for a number of fictional works:
"The Noet edition of this volume is fully indexed and tagged, allowing for near-instant search results. Use the dictionary lookup tool to dig deeper in to Joyce’s novel use of English words. The books are linked with the rest of your library, allowing you to look up literary and historical allusions with a click."
"Dear Noet, Please tell me what resources are needed to make the described allusion search capability function with a click. Thank you!"
I have yet to receive a response. I am proceeding with my planned study using other sources, both print and digital.
The New Bloomsday Book: A guide Through Ulysses Third Edition by Harry Blamires has been recommended previously by others and now myself for inclusion as a Noet resource. It is available elsewhere in digital format. The author describes the book as a "...page by page commentary...." Blamires states that he is "...especially interested in the theological patterns of Ulysses created by the numerous implicit correspondences and metaphorical overtones...."
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Roger, would you send me an email: ben (dot) amundgaard (at) faithlife (dot) com
Senior Director, Content Products
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Ben,
Thank you for your response. Email sent.
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On January 26 Roger Dittmar's post included the following:
"Dear Noet, Please tell me what resources are needed to make the described allusion search capability function with a click. Thank you!"
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An answer from Faithlife/Noet was never provided and I no longer wish to invest more of my time in trying to obtain one.
My query that began this thread is withdrawn.
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I think an answer to your question would require some explanations as to how Logos tags its resources. There is no such thing (at least, not that I'm aware of) of a general "allusion" tag that would allow you to search for such animals.
(We would also have to define exactly what it is you want to find under the term "allusion". I'm assuming you mean something like a "a figurative or symbolical reference" to something or other (an "obsolete" definition taken from Webster's Unabridged 3).)
Unfortunately you seem to have taken Logos marketing speak at face value. I can understand your frustration, I'm often irked by it as well. But essentially what you're looking for (I believe), doesn't exist. In order to search for specific "allusions", there would have to be specific tagging added by hand to Noet/Logos resources, but this simply isn't the case.
Pretty much the only resource that has really rich semantic tagging is the Bible. The rest of the resources, such as those found in the Perseus project, are basically plain text files that have been marked up with headings, chapter titles, footnotes and references to other books. That's about it. So you can't do the same kind of interesting searches on normal, un-tagged resources you can do on the Bible.
I hope that helps answer your question.
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The actual "marketing speak" specifically refers to literary and historical allusions with a click for specific sets of novels in the Noet Literature Research Library.
Thank you for your post. However, during a phone conversation with Faithlife Customer Service on January 23rd, I was promised an email response from the Noet developer team regarding this question. Other attempts at eliciting an answer from Faithlife by email and in the forums have likewise been unsuccessful.
I actually don't think the described search capability exists either. However, if the allusion searches were functional, I wanted to know what resources were required. As a customer with significant investments in Logos, Verbum, and Noet, I decided to stop asking a question for which an answer from Faithlife was no longer expected.
I continue to hope that Noet comes back to life, but I'm not holding my breath.
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Unfortunately you seem to have taken Logos marketing speak at face value.
I actually don't think the described search capability exists either. However, if the allusion searches were functional, I wanted to know what resources were required. As a customer with significant investments in Logos, Verbum, and Noet, I decided to stop asking a question for which an answer from Faithlife was no longer expected.
Sadly pragmatic. Thank you for the manner in which you pursued the inquiry, it was notably (Noetably[;)]) civil and helpfully illustrative.
"The Christian mind is the prerequisite of Christian thinking. And Christian thinking is the prerequisite of Christian action." - Harry Blamires, 1963
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JAL
Your kind words are greatly appreciated!
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I respodnded to Roger via email but I wanted to post here to clarify for everyone.
The short and straightforward answer is that the copy is using a fairly generous definition of 'allusion.' It was written 1.5 years before Noet had a desktop app (the copy from logos.com was moved over to Noet.com when the site went up). I believe that the copy is meant to refer to the general ability to search your library directly from the text. If you came across something that appeared to be an allusion, you could do further research on it right from the text with a search of your library.
Clearly this is not what you're looking for and I apologize for the miscommunication on our part. As soon as I'm back in the office, I'll have the copy changed to better reflect the capabilities of the software.
We did an audit of our copy a year or so ago to correct miscommunications like this. It looks like we missed this one. If you come across something else like this in the future, please let me know. I'm committed to making sure all of our product descriptions accurately communicate what the software can do.
Again, my sincere apologies for our lack of clarity on this.
(Please excuse any typos, I'm writing this from my iPhone in the Denver airport 😄)
Senior Director, Content Products
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Ben,
Thank you for the clarification.
Blessings,
Roger
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