What is "section searching?" It's not linked in the list.....
It's easier to demonstrate than explain.
The syntax is something like this: {Section <Culture = Counsel>}. AFAIK, Culture is the only datatype supported at the moment.
If you look at the Factbook entry for Culture=Counsel, you'll see a number of references - 50 Bible references, 33 pseudepigraph, 4 Apostolic fathers, etc.
When you run a search for {Section <Culture = Counsel>}, it's equivalent to doing a search for {Milestone <Bible Ref1>} OR {Milestone <Bible Ref2>} OR {Milestone <Bible Ref3>} ... OR {Milestone <ApostolicFathers Ref4>}.
The purpose, therefore, is to return all the sections in your library that refer to that particular cultural concept.
Does that make sense?
As I understand it, a milestone search find a referenced part of a resource. If I said "lookup x in this resource", x would be your milestone. The type of milestone depends on the resource. You don't look up "baptism" in a Bible or in a commentary, but John 3:16 would be just the right kind of reference for it. You don't look up a section of Augustine's confessions in the Anchor dictionary, but it would work in the Church Fathers and "baptism" would work in Anchor. You can look up page numbers wherever there are some. You can look up strong numbers in lexical resources that use them. These are all milestones.
When you search for a milestone then, you find the block of text (article, verse, etc) with clear boundaries to which the entry you looked up corresponds. In a Bible, John 3:16 will bring one verse, but in a commentary, it could be a discussion that spans several pages.
By contrast, section searching locates inside a block of text with clear boundaries, which parts of it discuss the cultural concept you look for. In Bibles, these blocks are chapters. Section searching for <Culture = Baptism> will show you in chapters which parts (verses) discuss the cultural concept of baptism. In the few books beside Bibles on which this search works (at this point), it may be pertinent sentences or paragraphs inside a chapter or other kind of delineated block of text.
Thus, though you cannot look up baptism as a milestone in a Bible because it is not referenced by topics, but by chapters and verses, but you can look baptism up as cultural concept by section because the sections in which the cultural concept of baptism is discussed have been tagged for it. On the left I can see which parts of chapter 3 in Matthew discuss the cultural concept of baptism:
This is how I understand it, but I confess that I am not all that clear as to how some related concepts are implemented in Logos 6. For instance, the section search for the cultural concept of baptism does bring up Anchor Dictionary and only the B in its title is highlighted (same for other dictionaries that come up). The letter "B" is not a section and does not discuss the cultural concept of baptism. Moreover, a simple <Culture = Baptism> (without the milestone or section bit) brings up illustrative material only (media, illustrations) but for some reason hits from Dictionary of Bible Themes (???) show up that don't fit this pattern.
Dave Hooton indicated that section search was one of his favorite features in Logos 6. He could probably explain it better and correct anything I have written that is not right, but hopefully the example of section search provided above can at least provide a starting way to think about section searching.
I am aware of three other possible uses of {Section}, apart from Culture: LiteraryType, PreachingTheme, and Event.
Here is a thread with a summary and some additional info, examples, and links to threads: https://community.logos.com/forums/p/94879/658946.aspx
And also helpful is the summary in the wiki here: https://wiki.logos.com/Search_HELP#Search_Extensions
As well, oftentimes these types of searches really become powerful when you combine them with WITHIN. So, to take up the example Francis mentioned, one could search for:
[quote]
Jordan WITHIN {Section <Culture Baptism>}
in order to find references to the Jordan river within the sections that Faithlife has marked up as <Culture Baptism>.
For instance, the section search for the cultural concept of baptism does bring up Anchor Dictionary and only the B in its title is highlighted (same for other dictionaries that come up). The letter "B" is not a section and does not discuss the cultural concept of baptism.
I mentioned this to Bradley a while back and he told me he thought this was an error, although he wasn't sure and said he would ask around about it. It seems to be typical on Bible Encyclopedias / Dictionaries. Maybe he could chime in if he sees this thread - it would certainly be more useful if the entire article was highlighted, to allow for WITHIN searching.
I mentioned this to Bradley a while back and he told me he thought this was an error, although he wasn't sure and said he would ask around about it.
It's a bug in the Cultural Concepts annotation data set; it's been reported to the maintainers.
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