Seminary Help

Jerry Walker

Hello all, I am starting seminary and wanted to reach out to see if anyone had time to chat with me about you guys leveraged logos and writing papers. Please let me know if anyone is available to chat. Thanks in advance.

Jonathan Bradley

Jerry, I used Logos extensively throughout my seminary studies for my master's degree and D.Min. Honestly, I bought all the textbooks I could through Logos for my master's, and then for my D.Min., they were provided through Logos. Overall, I would say that Logos Bible Software, during my Master's Degree, saved me at least 10-15 hours a week on average.

First, if you don't already know, learn to use Logos. Experiment with features, including layouts, inline searches, and highlighting palettes. Leverage all of the features that Logos has.

• For each textbook, I made a different layout which included the book, the Bible, a notebook with notes specifically for that book, and a highlighting palette for that book.
• For writing, whether it be long papers or short discussion questions, I generally had layouts. I had one layout that I used for all my discussions, and then ended up having separate layouts for the lengthier papers.

Regarding Logos, that's all I can think of off the top of my head. However, alongside Logos, for citations, footnotes, and bibliographies, I used Zotero (download page here). It's a free library sorting and citation software that I enjoy. You can create a collection in Logos of all your books and resources, and export it into a file to import it into Zotero. Here's an old video on how to do that.

Once you have Zotero set up, you can download different citation styles (click here for a video on how to do that) and make collections of resources you use to track what you do for each paper. It then allows you to make quick bibliographies. Don't forget to install the Microsoft Word extension, which allows you to use Zotero from within Word to make footnotes and Bibliographies (here's a video on that). Be careful, as the footnotes sometimes are missing an indention, depending on which style you are using. (When you launch Zotero, it should give you a prompt about installing the word processor extensions).

In the end, take the time to figure out a system that works for you for note-taking and keeping track of everything, refining it as you go. I know that Logos does to citations, footnotes, and Bibliographies; however, the advantage, in my opinion, of using Zotero is that it can also collect book information for physical books to make citations, footnotes, and/or bibliographies.

I hope this helps.

-Jonathan