The Library subject filters seem to be completely broken

Rev. James Neuendorf
Rev. James Neuendorf Member Posts: 27
edited November 21 in English Forum

My Library has now grown to the point where I am starting to realize that there are materials that I never knew I had, so I wanted to try to organize them a bit more. This is when I discovered that the Library tool appears to be completely broken, missing obvious hits on search, and with a subject index that is completely depopulated. 

For example, a search for "Archaeology" yielded only 1 result, but I have several titles with Archaeology in the title, not to mention more that would be classified as books about archaeology in the subject! I estimate that I have at least 20 books that should have come up under the subject filter for Archaeology, and got 1. The books are still there if you scroll through too! 

What is going on? Why isn't logos pulling the subject headings from the Library of Congress for each book? This is especially distressing now that my library has become unwieldy, and if search isn't functioning I could lose books in the pile even when they are directly relevant to my search!

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Comments

  • Andreas Roemer
    Andreas Roemer Member Posts: 1,130 ✭✭

    Also for this reason I started to tag each of my books with a list of keywords I created, so that I can better organize searches and narrow down results via "mytag:xyz" and corresponding combinations. With almost 15.000 titles it was a huge work, but it pays off every day.

    Good luck to you.

    ---
    Das Gerücht ist nicht immer falsch; manchmal wählt es sogar den Sieger aus.[Tacitus]

  • Lew Worthington
    Lew Worthington Member Posts: 1,510 ✭✭✭

    That does seem a little odd. While I'm always curious why searches work so poorly in the mobile app's library (Android), I've never had issues that I'm aware of in the desktop.

    If you've got a minute to do something, I'm curious: What happens when you search for something like Title:Archæology?

  • MJ. Smith
    MJ. Smith MVP Posts: 53,108

    Why isn't logos pulling the subject headings from the Library of Congress for each book?

    The subject headings are stored locally rather than being retrieved externally. They are usually the Library of Congress cataloguing information but sometimes have error corrections or standardization.

    with a subject index that is completely depopulated. 
     

    This sounds to me like your indexes have gotten corrupted somehow. Mine appear to be fine. In the command box, enter the command "rebuild index" (without quote marks) let it run, retry and report back - likely reporting everything is fine.

    Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."

  • SineNomine
    SineNomine Member Posts: 7,043

    For example, a search for "Archaeology" yielded only 1 result, but I have several titles with Archaeology in the title,

    Could you give us a list? Are you completely sure that the missing titles don't have "Archeology" instead of "Archaeology"?

    “The trouble is that everyone talks about reforming others and no one thinks about reforming himself.” St. Peter of Alcántara

  • Dave Hooton
    Dave Hooton MVP Posts: 35,674

    Why isn't logos pulling the subject headings from the Library of Congress for each book?

    with a subject index that is completely depopulated. 
     

    This sounds to me like your indexes have gotten corrupted somehow. Mine appear to be fine. In the command box, enter the command "rebuild index" (without quote marks) let it run, retry and report back - likely reporting everything is fine.

    Subjects in the Detailed View of Library are sync'd as metadata quite regularly and have nothing to do with the resource content that is indexed.

    Dave
    ===

    Windows 11 & Android 13

  • Rosie Perera
    Rosie Perera Member Posts: 26,202 ✭✭✭✭✭

    If you've got a minute to do something, I'm curious: What happens when you search for something like Title:Archæology?

    Interestingly, Archæology matches Archaeology, and vice versa. Meaning "æ" is not treated as a single character that must match the exact same character, but is treated as equivalent to "ae".

    I have 749 resources in my library that match that. It seems highly unusual that someone who has at least 20 books mentioning archaeology in the metadata should only find 1 hit in their library by typing that word in.

    I wonder, James, whether you have some other Library facet(s) selected that would limit your results. For example, here I have selected the "5 stars" facet which limits my search for archaeology to just 1 book when I actually have 749 in my library that have archaeology in their metadata.

    So start with a clean Search tab by clicking the blue "All" to get rid of all existing facets, and then type your search term in again. Let us know how that goes.

  • David McClister
    David McClister Member Posts: 106 ✭✭

    As Lew mentioned, instead of just typing "archaeology" in the search line, trying typing:

    title:archaeology 

  • NB.Mick
    NB.Mick MVP Posts: 15,868

    As Lew mentioned, instead of just typing "archaeology" in the search line, trying typing:

    title:archaeology 

    this is more restricted than just searching for "archaeology" which will hit for every occurrence of the word anywhere in the metadata (i.e. the title, the subject, the tags, the description...)

    I don't really understand the OP's issues and suspect an additional filter; searching like that in my library gets hundreds of results (some more with arch*eolog* which will hit regardless of spelling and of adjective usage, but archaeology is still the majority). Yes, the subject tagging seems only rarely to us the phrase archeology, more often are subjects like "antiquities", "history" and such - but I understand that's what the publishers provided the national library with. Very few of those search hits have no subject at all, but they fire for the other metadata.

    Have joy in the Lord! Smile

  • xnman
    xnman Member Posts: 2,780 ✭✭✭

    I notice this some time back....  here's what I do now...  type in "title:archae" and see what you get?

    When I only type in part of the word (i.e. archae) I get all the hits I have.... which causes me to think that sometimes more is too much?? lol [8-|]

    edit: I always shorten my search word now in Library search just because it seems to work better for the way I work. You might even shorten it more to something like "title:arch"..    Give it a go and see if that works for you.

    edit again: I'm a thinking.... the library search is set up so that the more you type in... the more specific it searches for. By shortening the search word ... it broadens the search and thereby give more hits on my resources...  well.... at least that's my thinking.... 

    Another reason could be that I'm just lazy and don't like to do all that typing.... [8-|]

    xn = Christan  man=man -- Acts 11:26 "....and the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch".

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  • DMB
    DMB Member Posts: 3,087

    I don't really understand the OP's issues and suspect an additional filter; searching like that in my library gets hundreds of results (some more with arch*eolog* which will hit regardless of spelling and of adjective usage, but archaeology is still the majority). Yes, the subject tagging seems only rarely to us the phrase archeology, more often are subjects like "antiquities", "history" and such - but I understand that's what the publishers provided the national library with. Very few of those search hits have no subject at all, but they fire for the other metadata.

    Well, 13 years, and I didn't know subject was publisher/library driven. I never had the column showing, since it looked like blind-mans-bluff. Architecture does bring up 2 books. Well, ok!

  • Andrew Batishko
    Andrew Batishko Member, Community Manager, Logos Employee Posts: 5,365

    If you filter your facet list by "archaeology", you may find that some books are using a different subject than "archaeology". In particular, it might be using "Excavations (Archaeology)". Can you specify a couple examples of books your are expecting to find with this subject?

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    Andrew Batishko | Logos software developer