Mark Barnes: Suggestion For Prioritization
Mark,
Is there any help on the horizon for improvements to Prioritization? Perhaps for Logos Max. Right now I have 107 Lexicons that are Type Lexicon in my library. I have spent hours trying to get it right for Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Strongs Numbers, GK Numbers and so forth. Sorry to say I'm failing!!
It's a mess! And this is just for Lexicon's. Dictionaries for History are just as bad, Dictionary's for Bible History, Ancient World History, Current History, Early Church History, Denominational History and on it goes.
I have found myself changing book prioritizations based on the kind of study I find myself doing, that just seems crazy, Logos is supposed to save me time. Surely technology can help here.
I believe that prioritization needs to be broken up into meaningful segments. Also can we make each listing in our prioritization a hyperlink? it would be helpful to open a book that has a similar title as something else.
Best,
Comments
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Also, being able to highlight a resource in the library and have it take me to its existing location in my priority list.
Thanks
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It's a mess! And this is just for Lexicon's.
It is difficult as you have to understand how Logos uses prioritization, differing between Types like Bibles and Commentaries with the same index and between original languages for Bibles and Lexicons, and handling the different datatypes in Lexicons (Headwords, Strong's numbers, Louw-Nida). But it is possible - see https://wiki.logos.com/Prioritizing and upload a screenshot of your Prioritization List where you are having most difficulty.
Dictionaries for History are just as bad, Dictionary's for Bible History, Ancient World History, Current History, Early Church History, Denominational History and on it goes. I have found myself changing book prioritizations based on the kind of study I find myself doing,
Dictionaries (i.e. Types like Dictionary, Encyclopedia, Bible Concordance) have Headword indexes like Lexicons, so they have to be grouped separately. But you have to help yourself with your different categories for History as Logos does not differentiate them, and they compete with Bible Dictionaries and language Dictionaries (Type Dictionary). So you have to group them as best you can given the kind of study you undertake.
Note that history books must be indexed and those with only a Page index cannot use Prioritization e.g. many with type "Church History".
Dave
===Windows 11 & Android 13
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Prioritization is difficult and will only get more difficult as the new Factbook uses different types of dictionaries and commentaries for each lens type. But that does not mean it cannot be improved. Some suggestions...
First, personal books as labels for sections? Come on Logos this was a hack from the beginning. How about adding a set of the most common labels up front and then allow users to delete those labels and/or press a button to create a new label with no personal book creation involved? (This concept should be extended to work in the Collection drop down as well.)
Second, how about some just-in-time prioritization the fifth time certain resources/resource types are used? Kind of like what Logos is doing with Bible selection card. Ask me not just for my top Bible but my top 5 Bibles. I say fifth time because you do not want to overwhelm the user on the first use of the app and have them cancel a bunch of cards on first use. This concept should be expanded to ask to prioritize a commentary on early use. Same with the first time a user uses each new Factbook lens and/or opens a Bible Encyclopedias and Theological Bible Encyclopedias. And also the first time a user right-clicks or whatever to bring up more information handled by a lexicon. This way Logos would help users understand and build prioritization a bit at a time.
Third, along the same lines as JIT prioritization, maybe a button on each new Factbook lens that takes users to their library filtered specifically to the resources that could be selected for a particular lens with the prioritization window ready to go if they want to make changes.
Fourth, set up prioritization and show a new user a default prioritization with the library/resources owned. A basic prioritization could use the Logos resources. Create several default prioritization sets - call them best practices and base them on what you MVPs have created over the years - and give the user the option to switch just the lexicons to a new set when they buy certain resources. Also give them an option to view the best practice sets with information on why they are considered best practices so they can switch to them or (good for Logos) buy more advanced lexicons that are part of the set.
Fifth, let users click on a resource currently in their prioritized list by clicking the name and then optionally bring up a list of alternate resources that a user may want to supplement or replace the current resource. This could also be done by clicking on the pre-defined labels from suggestion one.
I am sure there are other other ways that would make prioritization easier but those are things I wished for over the last year. I have rebuilt my prioritization 10 times as I have learned more on the Forums but a lot of users are not going to spend the time on the Forums nor reading through long Help Files to figure it out that I have. I am a read the instructions that came with the new toaster kind of guy. Most people thankfully are now. Those users do not want to have to figure it out - they just want it to work.
Windows 11 & macOS 15 (Logos Max - Beta) | iOS 18 (Logos Mobile Beta)
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Prioritization is difficult and will only get more difficult as the new Factbook uses different types of dictionaries and commentaries for each lens type. But that does not mean it cannot be improved.
That is not quite so as the lenses only show different views of ALL. But different topics may show different "categories" of books e.g. archeological vs. historical articles on a region, but the one book may have both articles e.g. AYBD. And how do we know what they are for Prioritization, and is it even practical to prioritize the same book in different categories.? (not finished....
Dave
===Windows 11 & Android 13
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That is not quite so as the lenses only show different views of ALL.
Here are two examples of what I mean by different "types" for the different Factbook lenses. I entered Exodus 13 in Factbook. The Bible lens shows me the chapter from my tope prioritized Bible. The Library lens shows me the passage entry from my top prioritized bible commentary and lists it and the next four prioritized bible commentaries regardless of commentary type. The Theological lens shows me the passage entry from my top prioritized bible commentary tagged by Logos as type Theological in the Passage Guide and lists it and the next four bible commentaries also tagged as Theological. AYBD is not tagged as Theological so it is not showing up in the Theological lens in the specific case of a bible milestone.
I also get a different resource type in Factbook lenses when searching for Justification. The Library lens shows the definition from my top prioritized encyclopedia (ZEB) plus a list of my next 5 prioritized encyclopedias while the Theological lens skips past ZEB, ISBE, IVP Paul, and AYBD and presents an entry from my fifth encyclopedia entry Baker Dictionary for Theological Interpretation of the Bible. I'm not sure what is being used to determine which encyclopedias are considered theological.
But different topics may show different "categories" of books e.g. archeological vs. historical articles on a region, but the one book may have both articles e.g. AYBD. And how do we know what they are for Prioritization, and is it even practical to prioritize the same book in different categories.?
Are these scenarios the same as what you mean by the different "categories"? It feels different with the new lenses but I am very much a newbie compared to you when it comes to all of this.
(not finished....
Looking forward to more dialog.
Windows 11 & macOS 15 (Logos Max - Beta) | iOS 18 (Logos Mobile Beta)
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The Theological lens shows me the passage entry from my top prioritized bible commentary tagged by Logos as type Theological in the Passage Guide and lists it and the next four bible commentaries also tagged as Theological. AYBD is not tagged as Theological so it is not showing up in the Theological lens in the specific case of a bible milestone.
Here, you are using the Beta v.37 as this lens is not present in stable v.36.1. AYBD is a the Bible Dictionary, which I was using as an example of a headword entry in Factbook.
I also get a different resource type in Factbook lenses when searching for Justification. The Library lens shows the definition from my top prioritized encyclopedia (ZEB) plus a list of my next 5 prioritized encyclopedias while the Theological lens skips past ZEB, ISBE, IVP Paul, and AYBD and presents an entry from my fifth encyclopedia entry Baker Dictionary for Theological Interpretation of the Bible. I'm not sure what is being used to determine which encyclopedias are considered theological.
For Systematic Theology topics like this, Logos appears to use books tagged with the Lexham Systematic Theology Ontology (LSTO) datatype. I have no Encyclopedias (Bible Dictionaries) with LSTO:Justification, just books of type:"Systematic Theology" with headwords. Which means I only see Lexham Survey of Theology in the Theology lens.
So you could prioritize books that satisfy a Search for milestone:LSTO:Justification.
Dave
===Windows 11 & Android 13
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But different topics may show different "categories" of books e.g. archeological vs. historical articles on a region, but the one book may have both articles e.g. AYBD. And how do we know what they are for Prioritization, and is it even practical to prioritize the same book in different categories.?
Are these scenarios the same as what you mean by the different "categories"? It feels different with the new lenses but I am very much a newbie compared to you when it comes to all of this.
Just as Commentaries are categorized as "Theological" by Logos there are inherently different categories for topics, such as archeological and historical articles on a region, and the OP states "Dictionary's for Bible History, Ancient World History, Current History, Early Church History, Denominational History...". If these are recognised by Logos (and users understand how), users can prioritize accordingly**, but can users expect Logos to have "Lenses" that accord with our "kind of study" (per OP)?
** currently, we have to Prioritize "theological" commentaries amongst our other commentaries and that may skew how we want to view them for other types of study, although Passage Guide assists in this. For example, I have four collections of Commentaries based on my own assessment and prioritize volumes/series in each collection with a "heading" that identifies the collection. It turns out that the Factbook "theological" commentary for Ex 13 belongs to my "Background and Textual" collection, but when I try other passages it becomes obvious that there is a Factbook entry only if it belongs to the "Reading the Bible Today" series in that collection! I envisaged having "Theological" volumes in different collections and wondering if I should re-order volumes/series for that purpose (unlikely!). Now imagine that Prioritization allows me to do this for Factbook and keep it independent of my general preferences e.g. in Context menu, Search results.
Dave
===Windows 11 & Android 13
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One big challenge for me is that I use different prioritizations when I do a study in English compared to doing a study in German.
I know that there is limited interest to have better language support (e.g., allow the user to have different prioritization based on the language of the resource) but I would love having it.
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With the Logos Support page and YouTube this topic on prioritizing our library is attested 100 times over. You are looking for ways to prioritize books but you must use the type of book. Bibles (any language) and you only need five the rest of your bibles will be available in any list the software generates but your top five bibles will be available on menus. Same with Bible Commentary. Prioritize your top five full series commentary sets. Or identify your favorite two commentary books for each book of the Bible and prioritize them. You don't need to prioritize every Commentary set you own just your favorite commentary. For Encyclopedia just prioritize your top five and the rest will be available when or if you need it. Lexicons prioritize your top five and if you use Strong's then advance DBL to handle Strong's numbers. If you study the Church Father's depending on your library when you hover over a church father that's been cited the citation will appear in Latin. I don't read Latin yet so I have prioritized English translation for the Church Father's so when I hover over the citation it's in English. You need to just prioritize your favorite books and not every book. Prioritation will simply move your favorite books to the top of the list but all your other books of that type will be on the list too. There's nothing wrong with the current prioritize tool. Go to YouTube and train yourself on how to prioritize correctly.
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