I'd like to have Logos Collections for each Bible book…

Can this be done with minimal fuss, or would a guy have to manually drag undesired resources to the Minus these resources: area? And while I've got you on the phone, what does it take to add items to the Plus these resources: area? This never works for me for some reason.

Find more posts tagged with

Comments

Rosie Perera

You can get a pretty good approximation for a collection for most books of the Bible using collection rules, and then use dragging to the Plus or Minus area to pick up ones you missed or exclude ones that shouldn't be there.

For example, here are my collections for John and Revelation:

John:

Rule: (type:commentary,monograph) title:(john, johannine, "fourth gospel") -title:(apocalypse, revelation, 1, 2, 3, II, III, letter, epistle, calvin, owen, bunyan)

Plus:
Calvin's Commentaries: John

Minus:
The Bible in Human Society: Essays in Honor of John Rogerson
Historiography and Hermeneutics in Jesus Studies: An Examination of the Work of John Dominic Crossan and Ben F. Meyer

Explanation:
The rule is initially quite sweeping then excludes all books on the Apocalypse of John, the Revelation of John, the Johannine epistles, and any books about John Calvin, John Owen, or John Bunyan (the most common Johns that appear in titles other than the apostle John). Then I manually have to include back in Calvin's Commentaries on John because that would be excluded by the rule. And I manually exclude two books which mention uncommon Johns in their titles.

Revelation:

Rule: ((type:commentary,mytag:scholmon) AND title:(revelation,apocalypse)) OR (type:monograph AND subject:"Bible--N.T.--Revelation")

Minus: Revelation of God: A Commentary on the Books of the Song of Songs and Jonah

Explanation:
In this case, I'm not including all monographs but only those I have tagged as "ScholMon" -- scholarly monographs about books of the Bible. This tagging is something I've attempted to do throughout my library, but haven't been totally consistent about. Anyway, in this case it helps restrict what gets picked up in this collection to books about the book of Revelation as opposed to the doctrine of revelation of Scripture. A few books that I don't consider scholarly (for searching) but wanted to include in this collection anyway for completeness get picked up by the final clause of the rule (after the OR). I had to manually exclude one commentary that happened to use the word Revelation in it.

And while I've got you on the phone, what does it take to add items to the Plus these resources: area? This never works for me for some reason.

You should be able to just drag them to that Plus area from the Library and drop them there. It helps to open the Library in a tab and arrange it alongside the Collections window so you can see both side-by-side. Be sure when you click to drag a book in you don't click on its title or icon as that will open the book, rather click on any of the other fields in the Library (type, author, etc.). Also be careful that you're dragging to right over that Plus area and not somewhere close to it, or Logos will think you're trying to open that resource in a new tab and will divide the tile that the Collection tab is in in two. When you're dragging the book into that area, look for the mouse pointer to have an attached rectangle/arrow, like this:

You don't want to drop the book down if the mouse pointer has a plus-sign and there's a shaded blue area, because that will open the book in a tab the size of that blue region:

It doesn't take being that far off from the "Plus" region for the blue shaded area to show up, so steer carefully when you drag-and-drop.

EDIT: You'll also find some suggested collection definitions for commentaries on various books of the Bible in the middle of this page: http://wiki.logos.com/Example_Collections. You could tweak those rules a bit to include monographs as well as commentaries if you want to.

Mark Barnes

I create collections for individual books whenever I'm preaching on or studying a Bible book. It's pretty easy for most Bible books, but can get quite tricky where there's two very similarly name books (e.g. Corinthians, John, etc.). Here's the one's I've done so far:

1 Corinthians: (subject:("1 Corinthians", "Corinthians, 1st", "Corinthians. 1st"), title:corinth) AND type:bible-commentary ANDNOT (title:("2 Corinthians", second, "II Corinthians") ANDNOT (title:(first, 1, "i"), subject:(1st, "1 Corinthians")))

1 Peter: type:commentary AND (title:peter OR subject:peter) ANDNOT ((subject:"2nd" OR title:"2 Peter") ANDNOT (subject:"1st" OR title:"1 Peter"))

Acts: type:commentary AND (title:acts, subject:acts)

Genesis: type:commentary AND (subject:genesis, title:genesis)

Hebrews: type:”bible commentary” AND (title:hebrews OR subject:hebrews)

John's Gospel: type:commentary AND (title:john OR subject:john) ANDNOT (subject:”1 John” OR subject:”2 John” OR subject:”3 John” OR subject:”John, 1st” OR subject:”John, 2nd” OR subject:”John, 3rd” OR subject:revelation OR subject:”epistles of john”)

John's Letters: type:commentary AND (title:john OR subject:john) ANDNOT (subject:revelation) {also add the John's Gospel collection to 'minus these resources'}

Luke: type:commentary and (title:luke, subject:luke)

Philippians: type:commentary (subject:philippians, title:philippians)

Psalms: type:commentary (title:psalm,subject:psalm)

Rosie Perera

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/216791#Comment_216791

1 Corinthians: (subject:("1 Corinthians", "Corinthians, 1st", "Corinthians. 1st"), title:corinth) AND type:bible-commentary ANDNOT (title:("2 Corinthians", second, "II Corinthians") ANDNOT (title:(first, 1, "i"), subject:(1st, "1 Corinthians")))

1 Peter: type:commentary AND (title:peter OR subject:peter) ANDNOT ((subject:"2nd" OR title:"2 Peter") ANDNOT (subject:"1st" OR title:"1 Peter"))

The penultimate ANDNOT clause in each of these makes sense, but I don't understand why you have the final ANDNOT clause in each; it seems to exclude the very thing that you want in the collection.

Mark Barnes

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/216867#Comment_216867

1 Peter: type:commentary AND (title:peter OR subject:peter) ANDNOT ((subject:"2nd" OR title:"2 Peter") ANDNOT (subject:"1st" OR title:"1 Peter"))

Slightly confusing I know, but note the parentheses. Using pseudo-logic:

type is commentary AND subject or title is Peter, but exclude resources where the subject is 2 Peter, but the subject isn't 1 Peter.

This means that commentaries on both 1 & 2 Peter will be included, but commentaries only on 2 Peter will not be included.

Rosie Perera

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/216881#Comment_216881

1 Peter: type:commentary AND (title:peter OR subject:peter) ANDNOT ((subject:"2nd" OR title:"2 Peter") ANDNOT (subject:"1st" OR title:"1 Peter"))

Slightly confusing I know, but note the parentheses. Using pseudo-logic:

type is commentary AND subject or title is Peter, but exclude resources where the subject is 2 Peter, but the subject isn't 1 Peter.

This means that commentaries on both 1 & 2 Peter will be included, but commentaries only on 2 Peter will not be included.

Ah, thanks. I'd overlooked the outer set of parentheses.

Mark

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/216791#Comment_216791

John's Letters: type:commentary AND (title:john OR subject:john) ANDNOT (subject:revelation) {also add the John's Gospel collection to 'minus these resources'}

Mark

Can you explain this one a bit better: how to minus John's Gospel collection

Thanks

Mark

TCBlack

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/216952#Comment_216952

Can you explain this one a bit better: how to minus John's Gospel collection

I'm not Mark but....

He means that when it appears in the list of books to drag it up to the box marked, "Minus these resources".

Rosie Perera

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/216978#Comment_216978

Can you explain this one a bit better: how to minus John's Gospel collection
I'm not Mark but....
He means that when it appears in the list of books to drag it up to the box marked, "Minus these resources".

I think he was talking about adding an entire collection to "Minus these resources." To do that, click the "Open" menu in the Collection panel, find that collection name on the list, and drag it from there to the "Minus these resources" section. Mark Barnes has a good video on advanced collections which explains this and other benefits of nested collections.

Mark

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/217016#Comment_217016

Thank you both for your answers