Verbum Search through Tip of the Day #47

MJ. Smith

Tip 47: LOGOS 9! Bible with Factbook filter and Context menu additions

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We interrupt the discussion of the Biblical Person Facebook entry to bring you the new Biblical Person Facebook entry of Logos 9. More importantly, to also introduce some of the new Factbook entries related to a Biblical Person.

While Factbook is very much an unfinished product, it is far enough along to show the direction Verbum is moving. Factbook will be the starting point for many of the Verbum functions. Factbook will provide the links taking you to other tools for study such as Guides and Workflows.

Warning: the entries in Factbook are generally the result of computer-generated entries, merged with similar entries, run through standardization routines, etc. There is still data to be added and human editing to be applied. While you will run into many errors, the percentage of errors in the data is well within industry standards for a good job. But to bring the data up to the next level of quality it is essential that the users report the errors they see. Hold Faithlife to high data standards by providing them with the cumulative learning opportunities of thousands of users on hundreds of thousands of entries; it is truly being useful, not being a pain.

The first change of importance appears in the Resource Panel toolbar.

1. A new icon (1) toggles the Factbook visual filter on and off.
2. The filter places a light blue broken line (2) under the nouns (substantives) in the text that have a Factbook Biblical entity (person, place, thing) associated with it. As with other coding, a reverse interlinear is required for the Factbook visual filter to be available.
3. Mouse-over provides a preview of the Factbook entry; a click opens factbook to that entry.

In this case, the Factbook page allow you to select which of the three Factbook entries for “descendants” you wish to view.

The second change of importance appears in the Context Menu where more data elements have an option to open Factbook.

1. Select a word that is underlined by the Factbook visual filter (1) (or would be if the filter were on).
2. Select an entry on the left (2) that shows a Factbook action (3) on the right. At this time, those entries with Factbook include: Hebrew lemma, Noun sense, Biblical person, Preaching theme, Theological topic, Biblical event, Biblical pericope . . . Expect the list to grow.
3. Click on Factbook to open Factbook to that entry. Samples of these entries are shown below.

New Sections:

• Key Articles
• Key Passages
• Bookstore

Sections currently missing:

• Semantic Roles
• Community Tags
• Respond

Sections with significant modifications:

• Referred to As combines the former Referred to As and Lemmas into a single section.
• Events combines the former Events and the Timeline from the See Also section.
• See Also has additional information and links

Note: throughout the system, Key Article is often drawn from a Lexham/Faithlife resource when possible. If no such article is found, then the priority assigned to you resources determines the source of the key article.

Hebrew Lemma factbook entry

This Factbook entry is new to Verbum 9.

• The Key Article comes from 2020. The Lexham Lexicon of the Hebrew Bible. This resource contains sections for:
  • Usage
  • Alternate Corpus References
  • Commentary Articles
  • Journal Articles
  • Media
  • See also with links to the Bible Word Study and Search

Noun Sense factbook entry

This Factbook entry is new to Verbum 9. Currently, this is a skeleton record with a link to the Bible Sense Lexicon. The blog post Logos 9: Lexham Research Lexicons may be of interest.

Preaching Theme factbook entry

This is an update of an existing Factbook entry.

New sections:

• None

Sections currently missing:

• Dictionaries
• Library Results
• Journals
• Respond

Sections with significant modifications:

• Passages changed to Key Passages, a less comprehensive set.

Systematic Theology Concept factbook entry

This Factbook entry is new to Verbum 9. Currently, this is a skeleton record. Contents include:

• Key Article taken from Ward, Mark, Jessica Parks, Brannon Ellis, and Todd Hains, eds. 2018. Lexham Survey of Theology. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.
• Media
• Key Passages with a See Also section to expand the reference set.
• Books from Your Library
• See Also with links to Guides, Workflows, and Search.

Biblical Pericope factbook entry

By expanding the range of the selection, the option of running Factbook on a pericope entry is offered as is an option on Biblical Event.

This is a new Factbook entry type. Most of the sections are populated. All indications are that the Key Article will prefer the Lexham Context Commentaries.

Biblical Event factbook entry

This is an update of an existing Factbook entry.

New sections:

• none

Sections currently missing:

• Library Results
• Respond

Sections with significant modifications:

• Passages changed to Key Passages, a less comprehensive set.

Switching to Factbook entries more likely to be seen when entering an entry manually rather than linking from the Context Menu.

All pages for <partial entry name> factbook entry

When your entry leads to many potential factbook entries, the bottom line of the drop down pick list will provide the option: Show all for <your entry text>. Clicking on this will  open an “All pages for “ Factbook entry.

The results for “Abrah” are presented in the following sections:

• Top Results – the top 10 results. These entries are not repeated below.
• Person
• List
• Event
• Concept
• Biblical Artifact
• Biblical Passage
• Sense
• Writing
• Place
• Lemma

Additional categories are to be found in other entries.

List factbook entry: List of Figurative Language Related To: <name>

This new entry type draws its Key Article from Thompson, Jeremy, ed. 2020. Faithlife Book of Lists: Words and Concepts. Bellingham, WA: Faithlife which itself provides organized links to Westbury, Joshua R., Jeremy Thompson, Kristopher A. Lyle, and Jimmy Parks, eds. 2016. Lexham Figurative Language of the Bible Glossary. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.

Two other important Biblical Person factbook entries occur only when multiple people share a name. Therefore, we will turn our attention to Mary.

See the entry for Abraham above for a description of this Factbook entry.

List factbook entry: List of People Names <name>

This Factbook entry depends on Thompson, Jeremy, ed. 2020. Faithlife Book of Lists: Biblical People, Places, Things, and Events. Bellingham, WA: Faithlife for its Key Article. That resource provides the list of all the Mary’s as a selection list.

Personal name factbook entry

This is a new record with content for the personal name itself rather than a particular person with that name. Although it is new, much of the content is already present.  This entry type occurs only when multiple people share a name.

Note: there is considerable work to be done to complete the factbook data and integrate all the system linking. Please be vocal in helping Faithlife prioritize the effort. Verbum user priorities are not necessarily the same as Logos user priorities.