NT221: Wrong instructions for collection rules
The video (and text transcript) of segment 3 want to teach participants - among other things - how to create collections of commentary resources on John, the Letters of John and Revelation.
The collection rules go for type:commentary (which luckily will work also for the real type:"bible commentary") and the subject: field, which is so far okay.
One may recall that in former, L4 times, rules for bible book commentary lists often used convoluted criteria for the title field, since subject may not be 100% reliable. This seems to have changed for the better (of course, non-versified commentaries in monograph resources such as Vine's Collected Writings or any from Vyrso will still be left out).
My problem is with the inferior collection rules built, based on a lack of explanation (understanding?) how such filter rules work - which will impact the participants when working with their collections and with their libraries, too.
NT221 said:
Put the following in the Rule field: “type:commentary subject:john.” When you do this, the resulting collection includes nothing but commentaries. While they do contain commentaries on John, they unfortunately also contain commentaries on the Letters of John, and so let’s refine your rule. Go back to the rule we started and add the following to it: “ANDNOT subject:1 john ANDNOT subject:2 john ANDNOT subject:3 john.” Now we just have commentaries on the Gospel of John.
Actually we now have those commentaries on the Gospel of John or anything other with the name John in its subject (could be a reference to a person named John, e.g.Chrysostom) that according to their subject do not deal with anything that has the numbers 1, 2 or 3 in their subject field.
This comes from Logos looking for "John" in all of the subject fields and subsequently reading ANDNOT subject:1 John as ANDNOT subject 1 AND John. By chance this three-times AND John is true in our search string, thus it could as well be left off. Users here learn wrong syntax: unless the phrase is put in parantheses, spaces are always implied ANDs (the rule makes use of this in ANDing the type and subject criteria).
The inventor of the ANDNOTs here is lucky that all commentaries with the alternative subject "Letters of John" also carry a small number with them - at least in my library, and only for the commentary type. Disregarding this, the rule should in correct syntax read type:commentary subject:john ANDNOT subject:"1 john" ANDNOT subject:"2 john" ANDNOT subject:"3 john".
However, the logic is wrong in the firstplace, since it excludes commentaries on John that also deal with one or more epistles! This excludes e.g. Talbert: Reading John and Köstenberger: A Theology of John's Gospel and Letters - those should be added in (or not taken out) in the rule, which would make it a bit more complex.
Looking at the subjects in the library shows a much more elegant solution: the subjects are actually longer and allow precise searching type:comm subject:("Bible. N.T. John", "Bible Study--John")
The difference in my library is twenty books (three marked just as examples):
The second ruleset, aiming at creating a collection for commentaries on John's epistles is technically wrong, too.
NT221 said:
Your rule should now look something like the following: “type:commentary subject:1 john subject:2 john subject:3 john.”
Again, the quotation marks are missing. Since we only have ANDs here, the rule could be rephrased to john type:commentary subject:1 subject:2 subject:3 to better see what's going on - we look for type commentary resources with "John" in any field (such as author, or title) and the numbers 1,2 and 3 in the subject field. This will really yield some commentaries on the Johannine epistles, but also wrong hits, such as John Charles Vaughan's "The Church of the First Days: Lectures on the Acts of the Apostles Volume III: The Church of the World" since according to its subject it treats Acts 17-28 and church history from AD 30-600.
And this is again bad syntax combined with a faulty logic in designing the rule. Just as there are commentaries that threat the gospel and the letters and shouldn't be excluded from a gospel commentary collection, there are commentaries that treat only one of the letters and need to be included in a commentary collection for the epistles.
In other words, we need to use OR or a list instead of (implied) AND. I propose type:comm subject:("1 John", "2 John", "3 John") as an alternative. Again, it's 20 books more in my library (actually more due to the wrong hits in the NT221 rule), an examplary block of 1 John commentaries highlighted as an example.
Come on Logos, you really can do better!
Have joy in the Lord! 
Comments
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NB,
Thank you for catching this. My team is looking into how to remedy the issues you pointed out. Thanks for taking the time to note the discrepancy and let us know about it. We appreciate your patience as we continue to strive for excellence.
Grace and peace,
Jon
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Jon,
thanks for your reply and your kind words. Let me point out that I admire the work that you all do at Logos/Faithlife and my last remark was meant to encourage you in this strive for excellence.
God bless,
NB.Mick
Have joy in the Lord!
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