How does parallel resources work?

If I open the Verbum Saints resource and go to Francis of Assisi, it shows me ten parallel resources. If I select Who's Who in Christian History, I get the same ten resources. But, if I select the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, I get zero parallel resources.

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Damian McGrath

Strangely from the Verbum Saints resource, I get zero parallel resources for Saint John Chrysostom

MJ. Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/849476#Comment_849476

I think I have a strong clue as to what is wrong with some headwords but without the ability to search on headwords I can't prove it

Damian McGrath

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/849478#Comment_849478

So, headwords play a role. What role is played by resource type, LCV, other?

MJ. Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/849487#Comment_849487

Parallel resources require a common index - in this case English headwords. The LVC is tied into the processing of synonyms although I don't know the details - Mark or Dave may. An a lack of synonyms appears to be what causes ODCC to be the odd man out ... but I can only infer that not prove it at this point.

Sean Boisen

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/849496#Comment_849496

I don't have all the details on how parallel resource lookup is implemented, but i strongly suspect MJ is correct: it's matching on headwords, and where the match isn't relatively straightforward, it's not found. It's not using the LCV as far as I know.

The Factbook page for the topic Saint Francis of Assisi shows three links in the Dictionaries section for my library (the separate page for Francis of Assisi, the person, should be merged with this). I'm not sure whether the other links you're seeing in Parallel Resources are also valid.

The basic tradeoff is this:

Factbook links in the Dictionaries section are curated, so they're likely to be good. But they will only cover resources for which we've taken the extra effort to do manual alignment.
Parallel Resources is matching by algorithm, so it may provide additional results, perhaps at the cost of some false positives

MJ. Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/849678#Comment_849678

Parallel Resources is matching by algorithm, so it may provide additional results, perhaps at the cost of some false positives

Unfortunately, so far I've only found false negatives especially no results at all.

Damian McGrath

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/849678#Comment_849678

Factbook links in the Dictionaries section are curated

That explains another question I had. Keep up the good work on this one. This is valuable "extra effort"

perhaps at the cost of some false positives

I had the same thought as Martha when I read this. I'm only seeing false negatives.

Dave Hooton

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/849678#Comment_849678

Factbook links in the Dictionaries section are curated, so they're likely to be good. But they will only cover resources for which we've taken the extra effort to do manual alignment.

Parallel Resources is matching by algorithm, so it may provide additional results, perhaps at the cost of some false positives

In the case of (Saint) John Chrysostom Factbook aligns with Topic Guide; which suggests that LCV is used in Factbook, or assists with its curation. But this confirms that Parallel Resources does not use LCV, and it can provide additional resources. In this case, "Nelson's New Christian Dictionary" is not provided by Factbook nor Topic Guide. It is quirky because "John Chrysostom" will find "Chrysostom, John" in some resources, but not vice-versa! "Chrysostom, St John" is used in one resource but it has NO parallel resources and it is not listed by the other resources.