Searching Shouldn't Be This Hard

I wanted a timeline for Holy Week. In addition to attempting to narrow the Timeline Tool, I tried all the permutations of these search terms that I could think of: Jesus timeline, Holy Week Timeline, Jesus timeline, Passion Week timeline, Jesus Chronology, etc. Spent 30 minutes at it.

I have ~7000 resources, mainly theological. In that mound, there HAS to be a pony in there somewhere. I never found anything I could use.

In 1 minute, 1 Google Search ("Passion Week Timeline"), I had a usable result.

Very grateful for Logos resources, but very disappointed that I can't use Logos that easily.

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Richard Villanueva

Interesting. I did a search earlier last week trying to do the same thing for Holy Saturday using the factbook and found a chart in the ESV study bible that was particularly helpful. I also hopped on pinterest searching for Holy Week activities and crafts for some kids ministry crafts and found several graphics detailing the holy week events very easily.

I did not think to use the timeline tool (which seems really intuitive and a right place to start for this kind of search.)

I searched and found:

(No Filter) = 17,359 hits
"holy week" = 0 hits
"good friday" = 0 hits
"crucifixion" = 6 hits (oddly none of them actually detail Jesus' crucifixion, although Yehohanan's made it in)
Last Supper = 3 hits (2 about art concerning, and the other is Apr 2, 33AD about the actual Supper)

I wondering if I'm (we?) are doing something wrong, or if this is the "wrong" tool for the job, or if this tool does not effectively do what it sets out to do.

However, a Media search using "passion" gave me a multi-slide FSB infographic detailing what you were probably looking for.

My best information came from using the Factbook and the library search. Interesting.

Dave Hooton

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/896399#Comment_896399

I wondering if I'm (we?) are doing something wrong, or if this is the "wrong" tool for the job, or if this tool does not effectively do what it sets out to do.

Factbook and the Media Search were both productive when starting with "passion" as that lead to a suggestion for "Passion Week" and a search for <Event Passion Week>. But it must be admitted that the Google search was more productive.

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/896405#Comment_896405

Bob and Faithlife,

I don't know how to get across to you that Logos has now evolved to be very difficult, unproductive, and unusable now, except for the small minority of technical users.

I hope this concrete example illustrates the point and the problem. Logos has now gone to far from being useful to the average user.

It has been my frequent experience that it takes a simple Google search to find the right answer in a few seconds, whereas Logos will display scrolls of results after I figure out how to construct the syntax for the right query. And Google is free, whereas Logos costs most of us 1,000's if not 10,000's of dollars of investment.

I firmly believe that Logos / Faithful has veered off the path to be useful to most of us now. Last time I brought this up, the response was defensive ("we're not Google and we don't have billions of dollars invested in millions of servers and thousands of engineers"... or defensiveness around the complexity of the search syntax). I hope you would rethink the roadmap and the actual usefulness of this expensive Bible software.

I sincerely hope that you hear us.

Thanks,

Peter

Dave Hooton

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/896415#Comment_896415

I firmly believe that Logos / Faithful has veered off the path to be useful to most of us now. Last time I brought this up, the response was defensive ("we're not Google and we don't have billions of dollars invested in millions of servers and thousands of engineers"... or defensiveness around the complexity of the search syntax).

This "concrete example" illustrates the limitations of any library in providing specific information. The "cataloging" of information in Factbook and Media Search did lead to appropriate suggestions and results, but not as varied as information freely available on the Internet.

Admittedly one has to know where to start i.e. Factbook/Media for this "theme", but it doesn't involve constructing the syntax for a search.

PetahChristian

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/896415#Comment_896415

Logos has now evolved to be very difficult, unproductive, and unusable

I'm very sympathetic, but that is an unfortunate consequence of adding more and more to the program, without dealing with any previous technical debt incurred.

In hindsight, the developers wish they made different choices, but I suspect the continually growing cost to completely redesign the program would makes it difficult to fix this growing problem. We might be stuck with many earlier choices at this stage.

I think part of the problem with this concrete example, is that if you happen to choose the wrong type of search at the start, you're less likely to find what you're looking for. Google has the capacity to work around that by initially returning results from all sorts of datasets, be it text, images, etc., which then leads people in a better/unexpected direction.

Admittedly one has to know where to start i.e. Factbook/Media for this "theme",

Thanks, Dave, for more concisely making that same point.

It wouldn't have occurred to me either to start by searching media or using Factbook. I think part of the problem is getting people conditioned to using the program in different ways than they're used to.

Mark Barnes

A media search for "Passion week timeline" (without the quotes) turns up a very nice infographic.

The Factbook entry for Passion week is what you really want, of course. That suggests these two infographics:

I appreciate the Factbook isn't necessarily an obvious place to look to everyone, but as you typed "passion week" into the search box, the event would have been suggested in the drop down, and selecting that would also have given you to the two infographics listed above.

All that is to say that I think that a medium-amount of knowledge can be a dangerous thing. A beginner user would probably have used a search everything or search suggestion and found the results. An expert user would have known where to look. But perhaps you fell between the two stools, and ended up in the murky waters of trying to persuade Logos to give you what you wanted. (I'm not saying that's your fault, I'm just pointing out that there are at least some beginner-friendly features that help make this sort of search easier than it used to be.)

PS — This is a reminder that the Factbook is very often a great place to start. My own rule is:

Broad topics — start with the Factbook
Narrow topics — try a search
In between — use both!

Richard Villanueva

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/896444#Comment_896444

appreciate the Factbook isn't necessarily an obvious place to look to everyone, but as you typed "passion week" into the search box, the event would have been suggested in the drop down, and selecting that would also have given you to the two infographics listed above.

All that is to say that I think that a medium-amount of knowledge can be a dangerous thing.

Agreed on both points! I went to the Search Tool (not box) and Factbook in my initial search but it's probably because I do not use the Timeline tool very often and have trained myself to go those routes and found those infographics you shared. However Bill thought (and rightly so) that a timeline and chronology of events would be found in the Timeline portion of Logos. I assumed I would be looking for a chart or picture of the events and that guided my search. In a similar way, I would not use the Atlas Tool in Logos first, but would probably go Factbook or a Media/Everything Search for a location or map - it's such a wider net of information to cull from.

One thing I am seeing is that maybe the idea is not that Logos needs to beat or be better than Google. Practically, it would probably require hundreds of millions of dollars in R&D for that, which is not realistic at the moment.

Maybe the idea is to realize that we are well served to use both Logos and Google to do what they are good at? If I want reliable, trustworthy, and citable material then I know I want Logos (it mainly has resources I have personally chosen to purchase.) If it's a quick and comprehensive search with potential wildcards and garbage that needs to be sorted out, for graphics or infographics, then something like Google or a media gathering site like pintrest would be my best option. Google is undoubtedly helpful, but not always credible, accurate, or safe.

Just a couple thoughts to add to the conversation.

PS:

My own rule is:

Broad topics — start with the Factbook

Narrow topics — try a search

In between — use both!

[Y] to this!

Randall McRoberts

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/896457#Comment_896457

Sometimes people don't understand how difficult a truly good search is to accomplish. I think Logos is above average by far. It takes a little effort to think through a search strategy sometimes, but the effort almost always pays off.

BillS

Agreed with all the points made. Just wish I'd been able to find it in Logos, which I love!

I don't think Logos has veered... And I think of myself as a technical user. The info I wanted shouldn't have been so hard to find it.

Thanks to you who made the effort to offer examples. And thanks to all who responded.

My apologies for venting... but even though I'm almost always able to quickly find what I want via search, this time I was stymied.

Thanks to many of you who offered very helpful counsel to start with Factbook. I keep forgetting about that resource...

May His resurrection power empower each of you this week & especially this weekend!

Richard Villanueva

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/896547#Comment_896547

May His resurrection power empower each of you this week & especially this weekend!

[:D] Amen! I know my Holy Week has already been a powerful experience, personally! May yours as well!

My apologies for venting...

I think there's grace and wiggle room for this, if we can't go to our Church Family with our frustrations, then where can we go to find encouragement and the answers we need?? Your frustrations seemed well intentioned and not vindictive, so no apologies needed as far as I'm concerned.

Be blessed and may your Factbook results runneth over.

Dave Hooton

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/896547#Comment_896547

My apologies for venting... but even though I'm almost always able to quickly find what I want via search, this time I was stymied.

Venting?? I thought you were stymied[:D]