Pleasant Surprises in My Library

Greetings all:

Eight years ago, my print library (between my office and home) numbered about 2500 volumes. (It has greatly shrunk -- used books don't bring much money, but the money did bring the blessings of a larger Logos library.) I generally knew what was in my library and where to find it. I was rarely surprised to "find" a book I did not know I had.

I suppose, knowing where each volume was was due mostly because I purchased the books as single volumes and I entered them in my database (assigning them to a topic (type, as Logos calls them).

I have about 30% more resources in Logos than I had in my print library. Yet, now I routinely find volumes in Logos I did not know I had. This is good. (Except, when I get diverted by the discovery and neglect my passage study).

Yet, there are discoveries that I wish I had known about earlier. I suppose this is due to the fact that so much of what I have is the result of buying collections and the upgrades in my base package.

Additionally, if I do not know about a book and it does not fit in any of my rules for collections (or library search), I never get to use it (unless it pops up near the top of the "search the entire library" search).

So I have TWO questions:

FIRST: is there a way to create a collection of books (or a bibliographic report of books) not included in any collection? (If my memory is not completely gone, I vaguely remember being able to do that in Logos 3.)

SECOND: Would you share your strategy for becoming aware of the resources in your library?

Thanks!

Chuck

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Allen Browne

SECOND: Would you share your strategy for becoming aware of the resources in your library?

Big question. Will let someone else answer part 1.

Collections are brilliant: looks like you’re getting good mileage from them, so I won’t comment on them. The Library window can be just as good for finding resources that don’t match a particular categorization.

Right-click the Library window, so you can open it in a floating window, and maximize it.
Click the View button to switch to Details view.
Right-click over the column headings to get the columns you want, such as Publication Date, Series, and Subject.
In the Find box, type a relevant word (such as hermeneutic.)

This searches under subjects as well as titles. The rules here are the same as for collections, so this finds resources as if it were an ad hoc collection.

I see you also have a thread of exporting the bibliography—something I also did (in Logos 3) to become familiar with what resources I had.

HTH.

Fred Chapman

I am not aware of a way to create a bibliography that will show you which books are not in a collection. The bibliography you can create in L4 will only show you all resources. There may be a way to do it that I am not aware of; if so I'm sure someone will chime in.

As for discovering resources in my library I just spend a little time each week browsing through the various resources and trying to organize them into collections and have even created reading plans for some. Part of the fun of having this massive library is discovering everything that is there. It is also fun organizing them into collections and then seeing the fruits of creating more targeted and useful searches when studying.

How do you like the transition from a print library to an electronic library? I know some pastors that cannot bring themselves to clear their desks of open books.

Fred Chapman

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/119237#Comment_119237

SECOND: Would you share your strategy for becoming aware of the resources in your library?

Big question. Will let someone else answer part 1.

Collections are brilliant: looks like you’re getting good mileage from them, so I won’t comment on them. The Library window can be just as good for finding resources that don’t match a particular categorization.

Right-click the Library window, so you can open it in a floating window, and maximize it.

Click the View button to switch to Details view.

Right-click over the column headings to get the columns you want, such as Publication Date, Series, and Subject.

In the Find box, type a relevant word (such as hermeneutic.)

This searches under subjects as well as titles. The rules here are the same as for collections, so this finds resources as if it were an ad hoc collection.

I see you also have a thread of exporting the bibliography—something I also did (in Logos 3) to become familiar with what resources I had.

HTH.

Allen,

Maybe I can learn something new tonight. I have performed the steps you show above, but that does not seem to return any information about collections or books that are not assigned to a collection.

Craig Edwards

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/119246#Comment_119246

Hi, Chuck. One approach to try is this:

1) Create a collection called, say, "All Resources". You can use a rule like "rating:>=0". That should list all your resources.

2) Now, create a new collection called, say, "Not in any Collection". To build this collection, don't put any rule in place. Instead use the 2 sections called "Plus these resources" and "Minus these resources". First, click on the word "Open" at the top of the collection panel. That will display a list of all your current collections. While this list is showing, click on the collection called "All Resources" (you created this in step 1.) Now press and hold your left mouse button (an assumption here..) and drag the "All Resources" title into the "Plus these Resources" section. In the listing below these sections, you should now see a list of all your resources.

3) You can probably guess the next steps. Just go up to the "Open" word and click on it to show the list of collections. Now drag the titles of all the other collections, one at a time, into the "Minus these resources" section. Every time you do this, the listing of resources will change (should be reducing in count.)

4) When you've put the last collection into the "Minus these resources" section, whatever is left in the listing are resources that do not fit in any collection you've set up to date.

The problem here, of course, is that if you create another collection, you'll need to revisit the "Not in any Collection" collection and add that new collection title to the "Minus these resources" section.

Hope this helps you.

Don D. Thompson

FIRST: is there a way to create a collection of books (or a bibliographic report of books) not included in any collection? (If my memory is not completely gone, I vaguely remember being able to do that in Logos 3.)

One way to make a collection of resources not in another collection would be to start with a rule adding all resources (rating:>=0) then put your collections into the minus theses resources window. The wiki has more information on nesting collections.

Don

I started this post before the reply above, but then had to deal with other important things .... grandkids, cat, phone calls .... before I got it posted [:O]

Bob Soule

Have you seen Mark Barne's "How to create a bibliographic report in Logos 4"? You can get to it at the link below

http://www.4-14.org.uk/off-topic/logos4-bibliographic-report

Also, you can see what one of the options looks like at this link.

http://community.logos.com/forums/t/15170.aspx

It is quite nice and I have found books with this I did not know I had.

Bob

Craig Edwards

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/119256#Comment_119256

Hi, Chuck. Earlier I gave some directions about using collections to discover what resources were not yet part of any collection. I need to correct something I wrote in Step 2. I should have written this:

"2) Now, create a new collection called, say, "Not in any Collection". To
build this collection, don't put any rule in place. Instead use the 2
sections called "Plus these resources" and "Minus these resources".
First, click on the word "Open" at the top of the collection panel. That
will display a list of all your current collections. While this list is
showing, move your mouse cursor over top of the title of the collection called "All Resources" (you created
this in step 1.) The title should now be highlighted and a red "X" will also be seen. Now press and hold your left mouse button (an
assumption here..) and drag the "All Resources" title into the "Plus
these Resources" section. In the listing below these sections, you
should now see a list of all your resources."

In my original instructions as I wrote them, clicking on the title in that drop-down list will, of course, open the collection - not what we want!

Sorry for the confusion.

Rick

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/119285#Comment_119285

I was going to post about the same thing that Bob did. Mark's program is an awesome way to visualize your library.

Ron Corbett

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/119285#Comment_119285

I went into MY LIBRARY and typed in "rating:=0". This gave me over 990 resources. I went through the list and added ratings to books that I hadn't yet rated. I discovered quite a few interesting books in the process and at the same time, got some practical work done on MY LIBRARY. (Some of my good commentary sets and some other helps had not yet been rated so I remedied that.) The whole project took less than a half an hour.

Chuck Forsythe

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/119246#Comment_119246

Hi Fred:

I have not turned back <grin>.

For study, teaching and preaching, I am thrilled with e-books. They are so much easier to use. I rarely use my print library for these tasks, despite having several hundred outstanding (IMHO) volumes that are not avaliable in Logos (yet). A few of these print volumes include: Andrew Blackwood's commentaries on various prophets, Wlater Kaiser collection, Bible Student's Commentaries published by Regency; to name a few.In the end, I suppose I could reduce my print library to 5 or 600 books and have everything I think I need (until that next great book comes out <grin>).

I still buy about 20 to 25 print books a year and prefer them for reading. They are more portable than my laptop and will take a lot more abuse (high humidity or snow on winter campouts, being dropped, etc. ) Though the Amazon Kindle in really tempting me!

Chuck

Chuck Forsythe

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/119329#Comment_119329

Hi All:

Thank you for the great ideas. Given it is Saturday and beautiful here, I'll be spending my time in my garden and caring for my trees and bushes. So, it will be Monday until I get to give these Ideas a go.

I pray God will richly bless you.

Chuck

Allen Browne

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/119246#Comment_119246

Maybe I can learn something new tonight. I have performed the steps you show above, but that does not seem to return any information about collections or books that are not assigned to a collection.

Quite correct: as I said in my introduction, I didn't try to answer Q1, only Q2.

But the Library window is useful for searching directly, using ad hoc rules.

Josh

Type "fsd" into your command box.

This is called the Facilitate Serendipitous Discovery command. It
opens up a random resource to a random location. I've found great gems doing this. Sure sometimes it opens up an ancient text or lexicon, but sometimes you strike gold.