Verbum Search through Tip of the Day #41a

MJ. Smith · October 2020

Tip 41a: Factbook Biblical Person: Library Results vs. Everything Search Part 1

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The verification of the Factbook Library Results section depends upon the most comprehensive search in Verbum, the Everything search. Note that several sections of the Everything search require an internet connection:

Atlas Results
Books.Logos.com
Bookstore
Community Tags
Faithlife Media
Faithlife Sermons
Fuzzy Bible Search
Library Results (Cloud)
Media Collections

From Verbum Help:

[quote]Everything Search

Everything search is a form of Basic Search. It searches most aspects of Verbum, including some online-only sections only available through Everything search.

Sections

Fuzzy Bible Search

Finds specific verses or pericopes without relying on an exact phrase. See: FuzzySearcy

Preferred Bible

Lists the first few passages from the preferred Bible. Click Bible Search "Bible title" at the end of the results to re-run the search on the whole Bible.

Library Results

Functions much in the same way as “All Resources” does in Basic search. Resources will list the number of hits and can be expanded/collapsed to display the relevant passages.

Your Documents

Lists results from documents created in Verbum.

Personal Books

Lists results from user-created Personal Books.

Faithlife Sermons

Lists community-created sermons uploaded to Sermons.Faithlife.com that are related to the search term. Click Search all sermons at Sermons.Faithlife.com to open a browser to additional sermon results from Sermons.Faithlife.com.

Factbook

Lists any Factbook headings matching the query.

Topic

Lists dictionaries, and Mobile Ed courses that discuss the search term appear under Look it up. A search suggestion, and links to re-run the search as a Topic Guide and Sermon Starter Guide appear above the Look it up options.

Library Resources

Lists whole books in the Library that have titles, authors, or descriptions that match the query. Click a book cover to open that book.

Media

Lists media items related to the search, and a link to Media Search for the term.

Atlas Results [Net]

Lists maps from the Atlas database that are relevant. Click a map thumbnail to open the Atlas panel.

Community Tags [Net]

Lists results from ~Community Tags` that have been applied to resources made by yourself or other users.

Books.Logos.com [Net]

This section searches the online http://books.logos.com website of Facsimile Resources, which are image scans of manuscripts that have been tagged to support searching within Verbum. Clicking the title of a resource will provide previews of the manuscript with the search term highlighted, and a link to search for the term on the website.^{^[1]}

To emphasize the distinction between resources tagged for Biblical entities and those that are not, here are the two everything searches run side-by-side.

Items to note:

If one uses a text string, an appropriate data type search may be suggested.
When a range of results is shown, it indicates that the Everything search is incomplete. Run the Search at the bottom of the section for full results.
The Topic section does not appear when a datatype search argument is given.

Fuzzy Bible Search

From Verbum Help:

Fuzzy Bible Search is a way to find specific verses or pericopes without relying on an exact phrase. It allows one to locate verses or pericopes for which they may only remember key words, small phrases, or translations.^{^[2]}

The Fuzzy Bible Search does not run in the Bible entity everything search. While it run in the text search everything search, it is not particularly useful when run on a single word. I leave this section collapsed and expand it only when I am specifically looking for a half-remembered verse or pericope.

There is a “More” function to see the remainder of the list. The list itself is ordered in most to least likely match to the request. Again, this is not meaningful when run on a single word.

For an example of a real use of the fuzzy Bible search consider this attempt to find a half-remembered 1 Cor 12:12.

Highest priority Bible

This section provides a Bible search against a single Bible, the user’s highest priority Bible. The Bible entity everything search looks for all references to the person Abraham, presenting the 1,276 results by verse, the standard search unit for a Bible search. The text search looks for the name “Abraham” which occurs 284 times. One must run the Search at the bottom of the section to see the full results.

Library (Downloaded)

Resources that are hidden are not included in the Everything search. The rest of the library is divided into downloaded/cloud resources. Here, the Biblical Person entity search should have fewer results than the text search because a limited number of resources are tagged – Bibles, encyclopedias . . . However, the text search provides only a preview. The Search at the bottom of the section must be run in order to compare the counts.

The Searches executed are “All Resources” searches which, like the Everything search, divide the results into sections:

Your Personal Books
Library (Downloaded)
Library (Cloud)
Bookstore

For each of these sections, the results match the equivalent section in the Everything results. For the downloaded library, the Biblical person entity search finds 45,156 results while the text search finds 637,645 results. The former includes indirect references e.g. he while the latter includes any Abraham e.g. Abraham Lincoln.

Library (Cloud)

The two Library sections differ on where the resources are stored. The results in a difference in how one sees the resource containing the result. Clicking on the result in Library (Downloaded) opens the resource to the result. Doing so in Library (Cloud) offers the option to download the resource or to view it in the web application.

Your Documents

Verbum Help simply says:

Lists results from documents created in Verbum.^{^[3]}

Types of documents (See Docs on application toolbar)

Bibliography document
Canvas
Clippings document
Handout (deprecated)
Morph query document
Notebook document
Passage list document
Prayer list document
Reading plan document
Resource collection
Sentence diagram document
Sermon/Homily document
Syntax search document
Visual filter document
Word find puzzle
Word list document

As I had not tagged my documents, the Biblical entity search finds no matches. There are matches in the text search on several types of documents. Note the option to view by type as above or by title as below.

While the section does not build a Search command, it is possible to create a Basic search on Your Documents which contains both the Your Documents and the Your Personal Books sections.

The warning message may safely be ignored as the update does not include any personal documents but is rather datasets. But be very cautious when you see this warning. It is generally better to wait for the indexing to complete.

Your Personal Books

Your Person Books section is, like Your Documents, dependent upon your tagging of your work. This means that the most common situation is no results for the Biblical Entity search but potential results for the string search.

Personal book results may be provided in any of three sequences:

Ranked (article) i.e. a measure of frequency of term vs. expected frequency
By resource (alphabetic order) as shown above
By count (high to low)

By count

Articles by rank

Yes, it is amusing that the Verbum Search through Tip of the Day has the top entries in rank.

[Net] Some or all of the features in this section require a live internet connection to be fully functional.

^{^[1]} Verbum Help (Bellingham, WA: Faithlife, 2018).

^{^[2]} Verbum Help (Bellingham, WA: Faithlife, 2018).

^{^[3]} Verbum Help (Bellingham, WA: Faithlife, 2018).