LOGOS: Your recent response to Metadata Tagging Proposals

I just noticed a recent response at http://wiki.logos.com/Metadata_correction_proposals

Response 1

All Lexicons should have appropriate ancient
language as well as lang:English
- The language of a book is the primary language it is written in
  rather than the language it is about, so a Hebrew lexicon written in
  English is English, not Hebrew. A Greek grammar written in Spanish is
  Spanish, not Greek, etc.

The proposal was intended to distinguish Greek lexicons from Hebrew, Aramaic and other ancient languages but also to help distinguish lexicons from other resources of type:dictionary and from English dictionaries like Merriam-Webster, Oxford Concise. It seems arcane that these should all have language English.

However, the response is inadequate because the proposal is at least 5 months old and no alternative is given. It does not recognise the need or purpose of the proposal. If the alternative is to use the 'language xxxx' in Subjects then this should have been stated. Note that this field needs attention as language is not supplied for at least 7 of my lexicons (do I have to list these?).

Response 2

Bible commentaries vs Bible notes: Resources that
comment on every verse of the Bible should be tagged as commentaries,
those that comment briefly on some verses only, or which title
themselves “Study Bible” should be tagged bible-notes.
- Logos’ use of these types is primarily functional rather than
  descriptive. The Commentary type is used for many different kinds of
  resources that are indexed by Bible verse and that the user may want to
  appear in the Passage Guide. Bible Notes are used for the Notes from a
  Bible, as, for instance, most of our “Study Bible” resources. Further
  breakdown of the Commentary category would be somewhat arbitrary, so
  it’s better left to user discretion via tags.

This response does not recognise a need that has been widely discussed for many years and is just as applicable to L4 as it was to L3. To illustrate its inadequacy my library contains 5 Bible Notes of which 3 have the title "Study Bible" and my commentaries (type:Bible Commentary) include 7 with the title "Study Bible"! Who makes the decision that "the user may want to appear in the Passage Guide"? Is Logos listening?

Background

This wiki article has been used to document
requests for changes to Logos' resource metadata and for Logos to
respond to these proposals. It has been fairly successful but changes
have been slow.

Usage

The primary reason to change
metadata is to create efficient dynamic collections with criteria like type:bible
lang:English rating:>1 but also to ensure Logos4's internal
categorisations are correct for prioritisation and guides.

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Comments

Mark Barnes

The language of a book is the primary language it is written in
rather than the language it is about, so a Hebrew lexicon written in
English is English, not Hebrew. A Greek grammar written in Spanish is
Spanish, not Greek, etc.

Dave is absolutely right - this is an inadequate response for the following reasons:

The languages field is designed to hold multiple languages (even the library calls it "Languages", not "Language"). So it's wrong to say the language of a book is the primary language it is written in.
Several lexicons already have two-three languages entered, including:
- Tense, Voice, Mood (Larry Pierce)
- Abridged Kittlel
- Liddel's Intermediate
- Abridged Brown-Driver-Briggs
There is a really obvious need to create collections of say Greek lexicons. The language field is the obvious way to do it. Try creating a dynamic collection for Aramaic lexicons and then tell me we don't need 'Aramaic' in the language field.
There's absolutely no logical reason I can see not to do this.

Please, Logos, reconsider.

Mark Barnes

As a further follow up, Logos said this:

“Ancient manuscript” is reserved for transcriptions of ancient
manuscripts. Translations don’t fall into this category.

But the following are both tagged as "Ancient manuscript"!

The Dead Sea Scrolls: Study Edition (Translations)
The Nag Hammadi Library in English

I think these are rightly tagged in this way, but it's clear the tagging isn't consistent again.

P.S. I've invited Louis St. Hilaire to the discussion, as I think he's the person at Logos who's responsible for these decisions.

Louis St. Hilaire

My apologies for the slow response on many of the correction proposals. As we've done some hiring in Text Development and we continue to work out the kinks out of the system on our end, I'm hopeful that we'll be addressing another good-sized chunk of them soon.

Some of the difficulty here is that, while many of these metadata fields are transparently accessible to the user for the first time in Logos 4, they already have a long history with functional implications for how books are processed and how the software uses them, so user collections are not the only concern. In addition, as is obvious, we've often not been very successful at maintaining consistency over the years and between thousands of resources, leaving users guessing as to what our intentions are for the different fields now that they're plainly visible.

The proposal was intended to distinguish Greek lexicons from Hebrew, Aramaic and other ancient languages but also to help distinguish lexicons from other resources of type:dictionary and from English dictionaries like Merriam-Webster, Oxford Concise. It seems arcane that these should all have language English.
However, the response is inadequate because the proposal is at least 5 months old and no alternative is given. It does not recognise the need or purpose of the proposal. If the alternative is to use the 'language xxxx' in Subjects then this should have been stated. Note that this field needs attention as language is not supplied for at least 7 of my lexicons (do I have to list these?).

We are actually planning to split the dictionary type into a few more types that will be more specific. Once we've sorted through the category and are ready to launch the changes, we'll make an announcement with complete details so that you can adjust your collections accordingly.

Using subjects for this purpose would be more appropriate. When we make the change to the dictionary types, we'll also make sure we have consistency in the subjects to make this easier.

This response does not recognise a need that has been widely discussed for many years and is just as applicable to L4 as it was to L3. To illustrate its inadequacy my library contains 5 Bible Notes of which 3 have the title "Study Bible" and my commentaries (type:Bible Commentary) include 7 with the title "Study Bible"! Who makes the decision that "the user may want to appear in the Passage Guide"? Is Logos listening?

Right. Our use of "Bible Notes" has been terribly inconsistent to the point that you can't really force it into a pattern. I ought to have been more clear that this is an attempt to provide a simpler definition that requires corrections on our end to implement rather than an explanation of things as they stand.

As for "who decides", my intent was to say that simple and broad categories leave us with fewer arbitrary judgments to make between types of books organized and indexed by Bible verse, which leads to more straighforward behavior within the software for such books and more flexibility for the user to categorize and prioritize what shows up in his Passage Guide. (Also, just to be clear, both "Bible Notes" and "Commentary" show up in the Passage Guide, so this particular distinction doesn't affect that function.)

But the following are both tagged as "Ancient manuscript"!

Yes. There are a couple of cases where this type was mistakenly used for translations. These will be corrected to conform to the standard use which has been applied everywhere else.

Anyway, even though we've been slow to respond--and not able to change everything--please keep the proposals coming. Dynamic collections open up a lot of new possibilities for using of our metadata, which weren't necessarily envisioned in the past, but which can be very powerful. Knowing how you're using them--and how you wish you could use them--helps us improve the system.

SteveF

Dear Louis St. HIlaire:

Thanks so much for your response to Dave and Mark.

My only "quibble" might be with the following statement.

many of these metadata fields are transparently accessible to the user for the first time in Logos 4

Many of us (especially those involved in PBB creations, continue to) check out the Libronix 3 ["about this resouce" - "learn more about this resource" etc] in order to see what has or has not been tagged.

Thank you for the further promised and anticipated work to be done in this area.

Dave Hooton

Louis Hilair, I'm afraid you haven't made a good impression for metadata accuracy when you misquote my name![:^)]

We are actually planning to split the dictionary type into a few more types that will be more specific. Once we've sorted through the category and are ready to launch the changes, we'll make an announcement with complete details so that you can adjust your collections accordingly.

Using subjects for this purpose would be more appropriate. When we make the change to the dictionary types, we'll also make sure we have consistency in the subjects to make this easier.

Please submit this strategy to users for comment rather than present a fait accompli. We are, and have been for many years, very passionate about library metadata.

Right. Our use of "Bible Notes" has been terribly inconsistent to the point that you can't really force it into a pattern. I ought to have been more clear that this is an attempt to provide a simpler definition that requires corrections on our end to implement rather than an explanation of things as they stand.

As for "who decides", my intent was to say that simple and broad categories leave us with fewer arbitrary judgments to make between types of books organized and indexed by Bible verse, which leads to more straighforward behavior within the software for such books and more flexibility for the user to categorize and prioritize what shows up in his Passage Guide. (Also, just to be clear, both "Bible Notes" and "Commentary" show up in the Passage Guide, so this particular distinction doesn't affect that function.)

As we understand how resources of both these types can now be user-selected for use in Passage Guide may I suggest that all "Study Bibles" titles be classed as type:Bible Notes provided that they are indexed by Bible ('The So that's Why! Bible' is an outright anomaly). This will populate Bible Notes whilst being slightly more objective about books that are classed as a Commentary.