Cleaning up Logos 'Clunky' Library
Coming over from the clean interface of Accordance and also being a Mac user has me looking at the Logos Library and feeling like I opened the kitchen catch-all drawer. "I know its in here somewhere!" If my wife used Logos I'd just ask her where something was and she'd know right away but I digress.
If I had not subscribed to MP Seminars I would have been lost trying to navigate and personalize the library. I highly recommend them.
Creating Collections is a chore. Two windows open to create a collection? Open Documents, Open Library, Create a new Collection, Find resource in Library window, drag and drop (one resource at a time!), wait for the list refresh, and then re-navigate to where you were because the reset didn't save your place. Drag and drop into the "Minus these books" field (if using the matching search). Repeat.
Titles, Alternate Titles, and Publisher aren't always congruous or definitive.
Ratings, Reading Status, License just seem to be extra information cluttering the filter area.
Would anyone else like to see the Library reworked and simplified?
If you've used Accordance you know exactly what I mean by simplified.
I'm not trying to disparage Logos. I'm just making the move over and seeing some things that could possibly use some improvement.
Thoughts?
Comments
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Your comments about Accordance are very interesting. What prompted you to change (or are you using both Logos and Accordance?) to Logos.
And yes, There are aspects of Logos library that are not the best.
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I could go for a spring clean in the Library.
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if you want people to vote for this you probably need to be clearer on what it is you’re proposing- are you asking for pre-baked collections, or a categorised library (which you can now get (more or less) with faceted browsing of the library? For my own part, I can’t find things as easily in Accordance as I can in Logos. The Accordance paradigm works well for smaller libraries, but not for larger libraries. Also, have you tried using rules for collections rather than dragging books into the collection?
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Creating Collections is a chore. Two windows open to create a collection? Open Documents, Open Library, Create a new Collection, Find resource in Library window, drag and drop (one resource at a time!), wait for the list refresh, and then re-navigate to where you were because the reset didn't save your place. Drag and drop into the "Minus these books" field (if using the matching search). Repeat.
Just to clarify your statement here, despite agreeing the library panel could be improved especially through improvement of the prioritization process and the exposure of more resource attributes.
Collections version 1 for selected titles not by rule.
- Open library
- Open information panel in the library
- Select books holding down cntrl key (for multiple selection)
- Select "Save as collection" in information panel
- Adjust name etc. as desired
Collection version 2 for titles defined by rule
- Open Collections tool
- Open New collection (happens by default for the first time)
- Type in collection rule e.g. type:Bible lang:English (you can test your rule in the library panel when you are unsure)
- Adjust name, use as parallel, move any unwanted result to excluded column
- If and only if you need to add resources not captured by the rule, open the library panel and drag-and-drop additional books into the include section
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."
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You might also not know about the amazing collections already created (usually using rules, not individual books) that you can access for free in your documents. If you haven't discovered these, go to "Documents", choose "Public" at the top left, and narrow the list to "Resource Collection" under "Type."
It shows about 1,700 collections (created by others) that you can choose to adopt immediately into your library. Find ones you specifically want and they can be extremely helpful. (The builders of those collections are often more knowledgeable than I am, and therefore write more thorough rules for the collections than I would be able to.)
The benefit of using rules to create collections, rather than simply adding individual books, is that future new purchases will automatically be added to the appropriate collections. You wouldn't need to add each book manually.
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I think Greg's correct. Accordance is good at smaller libraries. Everything in its place.
But collections? Yuck. They don't have the sophistication and subtle nuence of tagging. And the library better supports tagging (along with approximating sub-folders).
Just illustrating that Logos offers a multitude of solutions for each Logosian.
"If myth is ideology in narrative form, then scholarship is myth with footnotes." B. Lincolm 1999.
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I think I should have posted this in another area for discussion. I didn't realize choosing "idea" would put this in a different area for a vote. Still getting used to the new forum format.
Thank you for the feedback everyone! I'll take some time and go through these comments. 👍️
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I am using both platforms right now but I've been forcing myself to use Logos more lately so I can get used to it.
I am moving over to Logos because Accordance seems to be dying as you may have read on this forum. The way they handled the last major release left a bad taste in the mouth of some long time users and revealed a weakness in the new leadership and what was left of their staff. That is when I initially invested in Logos after having been with Accordance since 2009. Sad, but it is what it is.
I'm hoping that some of the Accordance users (there seem to be quite a few) that are coming over can help improve Logos even more with new ideas and suggestions. Logos seems to be doing great with the innovation and there is a lot of positive energy that makes me feel good about the platform.
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In Windows Explorer, when searching for a file, the results include not only files with that name but also files where the term appears in their content. The same happens in the Logos library. When I search for Talmud, I don't want 600 books/documents where the term appears; I want my resources with Talmud in the title. I also don't want to waste time "programming" (using logical operators or complex searches). This would be an effective way to "clean up" the library.
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If you don’t want to use “programming”, how is the software supposed to differentiate between users who do want [the] 600 books/documents where the term appears from users who only want books with Talmud in the title?
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In theory, the filtering tool (forgot the name) could add 'Title' > a mini-query for 'find'. It is true both the library and Logos.com don't advertise special filtering. For years.
"If myth is ideology in narrative form, then scholarship is myth with footnotes." B. Lincolm 1999.
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I'm just saying that filtering by title in the library is the most logical use. When I go to the library, my first goal is to find books, no its contents. Complex searches come later.
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The purpose of the organization in the Accordance library is to enable the user to see a list of their commentaries (for example) when you're reading a passage and want to place a commentary in parallel. You're then able to navigate through your list of commentaries as they're ordered in your library. Logos accomplishes the same thing by allow you to prioritize your resources.
The Library was a late addition to Accordance, because you never actually needed it. But people were used to seeing a curated list of their resources in applications like QuickVerse and WordSearch, so Accordance accommodated those users. The problem is that the library became the starting point for many users, and Accordance was never designed to function that way.
With both Logos and Accordance, the Bible has been designed to be your starting point, not the library. If you want to simply open a resource from the library and start reading, that's as easy to do now in Logos as it is in Accordance. But the way both applications have been designed is to allow you to view appropriate resources when you use the Bible as your starting point. Accordance does that with things like the Info Pane. Logos does it with things like the Passage Guide.
I'm a new user to Logos too, and I understand the difficulty in wrapping your head around a new way of working. For me, it took removing Accordance from my computer for a few weeks to force myself to learn to use Logos in the way that it was designed to be used. It was a challenge, but definitely worth the effort.1 -
This is not quite correct. The Logos library search does NOT search the contents of the book, it searches the metadata of the book - roughly the information visible in the book information panel. One can easily limit the search to a single library field e.g. title:Talmud or subject:Paul
There is a tradeoff - either you specify more specifically what you want (you must learn the fields and syntax) OR you use the facets OR you simply enter words and scan all resources with those words in the metadata. For the size of my library > 50,000 items, I need the control of the syntax. On a small library < 500, I would not.
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."
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Recognizing there's no obvious title filtering, the one MJ showed above (text: , etc) is also usable in Logos.com. And usable with multiple words/names using quotes. So not what you want, but workable finding books in a library and to buy.
Here's the full listing of filters (useful later):
"If myth is ideology in narrative form, then scholarship is myth with footnotes." B. Lincolm 1999.
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Thank you for pointing that out; I can now add this mistake to my collection of valuable lessons.
My library exceeds 100,000, including Google search results!😊
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MJ,
That is a great tip. MP Seminars showed how to do it the other way that I mentioned. Your way is much more efficient and easy. Thank you for those tips!
For those using a Mac, you will use the Command key instead of the Control key to select more than one resource.
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One filter that would be helpful is price paid. Generally, the books I paid for are more relevant to me than the freebies. Finding books that I paid more than $0 for would be helpful.
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