Researching in Logos

I am wanting to start research on various topics using all my various Logos resources and was wondering how best to go about putting it all together. It seems Logos has all the pieces between notes, clippings, sermon docs, canvas, etc... but to the best of my knowledge, there is no way in Logos to put all these 'components' of the research into a single cohesive place. I expect to collect clippings from lots of Logos resources, but I want to easily add notes and highlights and references. I'll want scripture references and more notes on those added here or there into the mix as well. I'm sure I'll have some word studies thrown in there and I might even be brave and try a canvas or two for the first time. It's a lot of different data I would like to be able to easily keep organized.

I know there are plenty of external tools that can handle this quite well such as OneNote, Scrivener, etc... but I like everything in one place with easy linking and updating. Am I missing something in Logos that offers this or do I really need to go with an external option. I kind of thought about using a sermon document, but it other than verses and images, it doesn't seem like it can really bring in data from these various tools in a functional way that allows everything to come together and still update the individual tools.

Any helpful tips from others who have tackled similar projects, preferably all within Logos?

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David Thomas

various topics using all my various Logos resources and was wondering how best to go about putting it all together.

Have you considered using Favorites to collect various items? I find that creating a folder on a topic that I can save links to clippings, Notebooks, sermons, Canvas, etc. is a workable strategy.

danwdoo

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1185960#Comment_1185960

I have not ever used this though I'll definitely look into it as a possibility. I would still like a single object type that I can add all the other document types and references into but this may be the next best option. Thanks!

Steven Veach

Given your specific requirements/preferences I would second using Favorites. It's flexible and can contain all resource links however you want to organize them. I don't see a way to easily (or at all) add snippets of text to favorites, though.

I would also suggest you reconsider the notes feature, especially if this is in-depth research or you'll be using your research later for writing large documents such as books or dissertations. As a rule I always have my notes separate from the Bible software I'm using. I personally use Scrivener to keep all my notes and to write in and publish in. IMO it is just much better and so much more flexible than the notes system in Logos.

One thing to consider before you begin your research is the process you will be using. Do you want to plod along at your own pace simply for the enjoyment of discovering new things or are you trying to use Logos to maximize your efficiency, reduce your actual study time (the page turning part) so you can devote more time to writing or application activities? Take some time to outline your research process before you ever begin. Will you need to keep track of sources? Logos has a great bibliography system. When I was researching my dissertation I kept everything in the Logos bibliography and then exported it to scrivener and manually added sources that were outside Logos. It saved me hours of work.

I now do a lot of research for writing blog posts, for writing podcast scripts, for writing fiction books, non-fiction books, and used it extensively in both my Master's and Doctorate programs. One of the main reasons I upgraded from the Word Bible Software (free program) is Logos has an incredible search capability, and also does a great job of producing automatic reports. The Exegetical Guide is great and so is the Word Study Guide. But, I absolutely love the Cited By tool which basically makes a commentary from any resource you have in your Logos library (including personal books). Saves hours on looking things up.

I used relational searches extensively during my dissertation research. I combined the 1800 + resources I had in Logos with between 200-300 ebooks imported as personal books so they could be searched simultaneously. I then produced an outline for my dissertation, converted that outline into a series of keyword search strings and ran those searches in logos, then reviewed the hits found across the entire library. The alternative would be months of reading, highlighting, collecting notes and citations. With logos search I could do all this in a matter of weeks and focus my reading on key selected texts.

Now that I'm finished with formal education I do not work this way anymore. I do still use the search quite a bit, plus use the Bible to look up references directly. I use a blank passage list to look up strings of references that I find outside of logos. I've removed the personal books library I had (not by choice) and restarted, this time only including titles that I consider "deep wells" of information that I can draw on for years. Systematic Theology books are the majority.

The biggest challenges I've found in conducting research is efficiently extracting notes/snipets from books, and academic articles. I used to do this with Balabolka when on a windows machine (text to speech, then copy/paste notes/snippets to Scrivener) but now use Scrivener exclusively since moving to Mac (the Mac OS has a built in text to speech that works inside Scrivener). If the resource is in Logos I use its text to speech (which is okay) frequently and copy/paste what I want to keep. This is easer today since I don't have to track sources. Academic articles I want to keep long-term and refer to later I take the time to convert to docx and import into the Logos library.

Lastly, you will want to determine how you will gain access to academic articles (if you even need them at all). I don't think purchasing the entire catalog of a single journal is the way to go (especially given the prices). Plus, the majority of academic writing today is gobbledygook anyway. I have academic access to journal searches so I can pick and choose what I want and there is no overhead/paywall blocking. If you don't have academic access check with your local public library or look around at online libraries. I had access all through grad school and now have perpetual access after graduation. But, now that I'm out of school I read fewer academic articles so this might not be an issue for you.

I was a die-hard believer in free bible software for many years until my research simply outgrew the capabilities of those programs. Logos is a great step up. I wish you all the best on your future research.

danwdoo

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1185995#Comment_1185995

Hi Steven.
Thanks for the in depth information. I'm not doing any kind of formal research or writing so while I want to have everything in a form I can review and think over, it doesn't need any kind of format requirements. This is simply my wanting to tackle some theological issues on my own that I've never really given enough time to before. The outlet will be in teaching and preaching. I've never used the Bibliography part of Logos, but I do enjoy the clippings feature. I just wish it was better integrated with notes. I definitely need to become familiar with the cited tool as I haven't used that at all. Most if not all resources I will use will be in Logos so that should simplify things somewhat. Thanks for all the helpful thoughts!

Steven Veach

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1186015#Comment_1186015

Absolutely, and if you have any further questions along the way don't hesitate to ask.

I like the clippings feature also, especially that it's easy to access and send snippets to and that it auto adds the citation and that you can easily have multiple clipping documents based on subject. The limited export options is a red flag for me, but that's because of my reliance on 3rd part software for writing. Different resources seem to present themselves differently in export with no option to change that formatting which bugs me.

When I'm working through a book I typically create a summary document that contains all the notes for it. Then I go through and rework it to clean it up, and add the bibliographic info at the top. This is saved in a Scrivener folder indefinitely in my Research Notebook which is organized by subject or project. It can be content searched at a later date to pull info as needed. Its similar to what the clippings tool does but with more freeform and flexibility. Scrivener also has the split screen feature so I can have a summary document with all my notes in the left pane and the document I'm writing in the right pane as I work.

I'm not really the best to comment on the Notes feature in Logos as I took one look at it and ran in the other direction almost immediately. It seems to function like an awkward cousin of Scrivener. If it were more like a word processor I might consider it. But the way it is now I'm not at all interested.

Good luck in you research. I hope you enjoy the digging!