How to Prioritize?

Ok, I have to admit that the whole prioritize resources thing has my head spinning. Could anyone give me a quick primer on how to prioritize efficiently? I have Scholars (485 resources). What types of things do I prioritize? How would I go about setting that up? I'm not looking for which individual resources to prioritize (e.g. ESV over NASB), but rather some advice on the method and means of prioritizing.

I'm really at sea on this, and would appreciate some simplified explanations. Thanks!

Find more posts tagged with

Features

Comments

Rich DeRuiter

I'm really at sea on this, and would appreciate some simplified explanations. Thanks!

Me too. I'd much rather prioritize by category, than just prioritize - uh - stuff.

Here's what I did. I prioritized my English Bibles first, starting with my preferred Bible and then put in about a half-dozen or so other English Bibles and put them in the order I wanted to see them when using the arrow keys.

Then, under those, I put in my original language preferences.

Then under those I did my lexicons (just a couple here for me - for both Hebrew & Greek).

Finally, because I wanted to group these, I put several Study Bibles (but that didn't seem to have any effect when scrolling through them with the right/left arrow keys) -- maybe collections would work better for this, but I haven't played much with them either.

I haven't begun to prioritize my commentaries, mostly because it would be a lot of work and it's hard to know how this prioritization function will work, and I'm not sure how to group them into categories (exegetical, homiletical, study-Bible, etc.). My experiment with the study Bibles showed it's not working as I had hoped. And then there was the Beta update that erased all my prioritizations.

I'm not going to put a lot of work into something that may be erased, and which I don't fully understand. But the first few prioritizations did help with the function of the program.

Todd Phillips

Here's my thoughts on my list in the order that they are on my list:

Bibles - English and Orig lang are intermixed (top five will show in menu and in passage comparison window). I have NA27 listed third between my English ones so I can see in on the right-click menu.

English dictionary resources in order - I have everything I use in this list, because when it's not in the list it seems to take a lot longer to find an link. These are before everything else in the list (except Bibles) since I don't want an English word to keylink to a greek lexicon or some other resource that has an English index.

Greek lexicons in order

Hebrew lexicons in order

Josephus works in order (English then Greek) - This was necessary to have the English show up in popups and in keylinks. Before I did this the Josephus Greek Apparatus was getting all the links (because it was first alphabetically), and that wasn't useful.

Commentaries in order of perference - Commentary Series and individual commentaries (not part of a series) are intermixed in the order I want to see them in the passage guide.

I have 76 entries in my Preferred list. Sometimes it's hard to find things.

Juanita

I'm really at sea on this, and would appreciate some simplified explanations. Thanks!

I haven't begun to prioritize my commentaries, mostly because it would be a lot of work and it's hard to know how this prioritization function will work, and I'm not sure how to group them into categories (exegetical, homiletical, study-Bible, etc.). My experiment with the study Bibles showed it's not working as I had hoped. And then there was the Beta update that erased all my prioritizations.

So far none of this is intuitive to me and it seems less painful to just "poke myself in the eye". How can anyone think this is easy to use? And at least, I know that my being overwhelmed is not related to using v. 3 and comparing it with v. 4. It is the lack of any "help" within the program. Hopefully, there will be a Quick Start guide to set up v. 4 related to installation and indexing for new users. Then, some kind of video that explains things like prioritization and searching. I really am trying to be positive.[^o)]

spitzerpl

So far none of this is intuitive to me and it seems less painful to just "poke myself in the eye".

Thats exactly why George will be getting Lasik soon.

Dave Hooton

I'm really at sea on this, and would appreciate some simplified explanations. Thanks!

I go along with the above suggestions and would add:

pick at least 5 of each type because the various context menus list five, and you might find some strange ones making up the five! eg. 5 English bibles, 5 English dictionaries (whether bible oriented or pure English language), 5 Greek bibles, 5 Greek lexicons
beware that some resources cater for multiple data types and you might put Strong's Lexicon with Greek/Hebrew lexicons thinking it will pick up Strong's numbers. But one of my English resources (Vine's Complete Expository Dictionary) was higher in the list and it also handles Strong's numbers! If you want it to stay with English words only then right click the resource in the list, choose "Advanced Limits" and pick English from the first drop-down.

Eric Fary

This is the key. It's what the emphasis is on all the MP Seminars. If you customize and put it into the order that you prefer of the get go, the sea won't seem so small.

Fred Greco

I'm really at sea on this, and would appreciate some simplified explanations. Thanks!

I go along with the above suggestions and would add:

pick at least 5 of each type because the various context menus list five, and you might find some strange ones making up the five! eg. 5 English bibles, 5 English dictionaries (whether bible oriented or pure English language), 5 Greek bibles, 5 Greek lexicons

beware that some resources cater for multiple data types and you might put Strong's Lexicon with Greek/Hebrew lexicons thinking it will pick up Strong's numbers. But one of my English resources (Vine's Complete Expository Dictionary) was higher in the list and it also handles Strong's numbers! If you want it to stay with English words only then right click the resource in the list, choose "Advanced Limits" and pick English from the first drop-down.

Ok, here is my problem. I'm really trying to make this work, but I cannot figure out how to see the "universe" of types in order to choose which should be best priority. I have 465 resources (Scholars OC). How can I find (easily) all the English Bibles, English dictionaries, Commentaries, Greek lexicons, etc? I know I could just search for "Bible" and then drag a few over, but isn't there a better way to see which resources are that "data type" (I'm not even sure that is a correct reference) so that I can really prioritize them?

Any help would be appreciated, because I'm not likely to spend a couple of hours "guessing" at which resources go with which.

Ken McGuire

I would recommend using tags.

type:Bible lang:English

type:Dictionary lang:English

type:Dictionary lang:Greek

type:Commentary

etc.

Dave Hooton

Ok, here is my problem. I'm really trying to make this work, but I cannot figure out how to see the "universe" of types in order to choose which should be best priority. I have 465 resources (Scholars OC). How can I find (easily) all the English Bibles, English dictionaries, Commentaries, Greek lexicons, etc? I know I could just search for "Bible" and then drag a few over, but isn't there a better way to see which resources are that "data type" (I'm not even sure that is a correct reference) so that I can really prioritize them?

My Prioritize list consists of the following from top down (type the suggested command in Library Find bar to see books of that category):-

5 English bibles eg. type:bible lang:English

5 English dictionaries eg. title:bible dictionary (I have 4 Bible Dictionaries with Merriam-Webster last).

5 Greek lexicons eg. type:dictionary title:greek

5 Hebrew-Aramaic Lexicons eg. type:dictionary title:hebrew

5 Greek Bibles eg. type:bible lang:Greek

5 Hebrew Bibles eg. type:bible lang:Hebrew

5 commentaries eg. type:commentary

(‾◡◝)

File this under "Probably Already Suggested" ...

Seems like the Prioritize function is confusing to many, especially at the beginning. And yet, it is very important. Why not create a Setup Wizard that can be found under Tools and will run automatically after the initial install/index in order to guide everyone?

Todd Phillips

I have 76 entries in my Preferred list. Sometimes it's hard to find things.

I'm starting to think that I have too many Preferred resources.

I was having trouble with getting Westminster Confession of Faith references to pop-up when I moused over them in a text. The WCF was not in Preferred list, and it was taking upwards of 30 SECONDS to get the pop-up to show, and the disk was spinning while waiting, so I could tell it was searching for it. Then I added it to the end of my preferred resources list, and it still took 5 seconds to pop-up. So I moved it up to 6th place in the list (after my bibles), and now it's nearly instantaneous to pop-up.

This seems to be an side-effect of not having separate priority lists for each data-type. None of my other preferred resources have WCF data, but the WCF pop-up was obviously slowed down by having the other resources higher in priority than the WCF. And why does it take so long to find things that aren't on the list?