Need Help With Collection Rule

Doc B
Doc B Member Posts: 3,585 ✭✭✭
edited November 2024 in English Forum

Do any of you have a better collection rule I can use, or at least suggestions on how to improve mine? I'm trying to develop a collection of all my Greek teaching tools, such as textbooks, courses, grammars, and the like. The rule I'm using is

type:monograph AND subject:greek ANDNOT author:emil OR type:grammar ANDNOT title:hebrew OR type:courseware

but I am missing a few things and gathering a few extra as well. (For example, I'm getting Latin textbooks, but I can't exclude 'Latin' since it is in the title of the Walker Pronunciation Guide, and so forth.)

I expect I'm not using some parentheses correctly as well.

All suggestions are welcome.

Eating a steady diet of government cheese, and living in a van down by the river.

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Comments

  • DMB
    DMB Member Posts: 3,087 ✭✭

    Well, I'm not a collection person, but policy-wise, whenever there's a sequence of 'and' plus 'or', I use parens. You never know if they're parsing leftward or rightward or optimizing. I guess you're seeking parens-expertise (which depends on what you're wanting)?

  • Wolfgang Schneider
    Wolfgang Schneider Member Posts: 678 ✭✭

    Sometimes when it's too complicate to build a single rule covering various kinds of situations, one could use a rule which produces a number of results and then add these to the "+keep these resources" box, then change the rule to find more results and do the same to add those to the resources to keep, and repeat this until the resources you want to have included in the collection are all added to the "keep" selection.

    Wolfgang Schneider

    (BibelCenter)

  • MJ. Smith
    MJ. Smith MVP Posts: 53,653

    Doc B said:

    I expect I'm not using some parentheses correctly as well.

    So much so that I don't know what you are trying to do. My guess, and it is only a guess is that you mean something like

    (type:monograph AND subject:greek ANDNOT author:emil) OR (type:grammar ANDNOT title:hebrew) OR type:courseware

    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."

  • Beloved Amodeo
    Beloved Amodeo Member Posts: 4,181 ✭✭✭

    MJ. Smith said:

    Doc B said:

    I expect I'm not using some parentheses correctly as well.

    So much so that I don't know what you are trying to do. My guess, and it is only a guess is that you mean something like

    (type:monograph AND subject:greek ANDNOT author:emil) OR (type:grammar ANDNOT title:hebrew) OR type:courseware

    MJ like you I'm in the dark as to Doc's ultimate goal, but I was able to produce a manageable collection with this rule:

    type:monograph, subject:greek ANDNOT author:emil, title:hebrew -type:grammar, -type:course

    However, I have a question; why is it that what was once a method of excluding references no longer appears to be effective has something changed or am I recalling amiss? And, to be clear I'm referring to placing a ( - ) sign before your value of reference. It doesn't work in the library either.

    Meanwhile, Jesus kept on growing wiser and more mature, and in favor with God and his fellow man.

    International Standard Version. (2011). (Lk 2:52). Yorba Linda, CA: ISV Foundation.

    MacBook Pro MacOS Sequoia 15.2 1TB SSD

  • MJ. Smith
    MJ. Smith MVP Posts: 53,653

    why is it that what was once a method of excluding references no longer appears to be effective has something changed or am I recalling amiss?

    While I am familiar with that outside of Faithlife products, I never used it in Logos/Verbum - either because it wasn't valid or because I didn't know about it.  I do remember users begging for a 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."

  • Beloved Amodeo
    Beloved Amodeo Member Posts: 4,181 ✭✭✭
    MJ. Smith said:

    why is it that what was once a method of excluding references no longer appears to be effective has something changed or am I recalling amiss?

    While I am familiar with that outside of Faithlife products, I never used it in Logos/Verbum - either because it wasn't valid or because I didn't know about it.  I do remember users begging for a NOT.

    I think this is a valuable feature and if it has been abandoned for some unstated reason either an alternative or a readoption of this feature should receive immediate attention.
    I'm fairly certain this has been available in the past. I can't in any way justify the elimination of this valuable feature.

    Meanwhile, Jesus kept on growing wiser and more mature, and in favor with God and his fellow man.

    International Standard Version. (2011). (Lk 2:52). Yorba Linda, CA: ISV Foundation.

    MacBook Pro MacOS Sequoia 15.2 1TB SSD

  • MJ. Smith
    MJ. Smith MVP Posts: 53,653

    I can't in any way justify the elimination of this valuable feature.

    ANDNOT serves the same purpose so there is no loss of functionality.

    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."

  • Beloved Amodeo
    Beloved Amodeo Member Posts: 4,181 ✭✭✭

    MJ. Smith said:

    I can't in any way justify the elimination of this valuable feature.

    ANDNOT serves the same purpose so there is no loss of functionality.

    I tried ANDNOT to filter out grammars and courseware why didn't it work?

    Meanwhile, Jesus kept on growing wiser and more mature, and in favor with God and his fellow man.

    International Standard Version. (2011). (Lk 2:52). Yorba Linda, CA: ISV Foundation.

    MacBook Pro MacOS Sequoia 15.2 1TB SSD

  • MJ. Smith
    MJ. Smith MVP Posts: 53,653

    tried ANDNOT to filter out grammars and courseware why didn't it work?

    Where did you put the parens?

    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."

  • Beloved Amodeo
    Beloved Amodeo Member Posts: 4,181 ✭✭✭

    I tried all kinds of methods ANDNOT (type:grammar, type:courseware) among other ineffective permutations..

    Meanwhile, Jesus kept on growing wiser and more mature, and in favor with God and his fellow man.

    International Standard Version. (2011). (Lk 2:52). Yorba Linda, CA: ISV Foundation.

    MacBook Pro MacOS Sequoia 15.2 1TB SSD

  • Kiyah
    Kiyah Member Posts: 2,828 ✭✭✭✭

    The rule has to be so complex and specific that it may just be easier to use several rules to identify all of the resources you want and then tag them all with the same descriptive tag, like greek-tools. Here's what my rule looked like if I were attempting the same thing for my library (I left latin in the excluded resources because I don't own the Walker resource):

    lang:english AND type:(monograph,grammar,lexicon,course,bible-commentary,bible-notes) AND (subject:(greek,language) ANDNOT subject:(hebrew,aramaic) OR author:(mounce-william,vine,leedy,hurst-rebekah,robertson-archibald,strong-james,vincent-marvin,wuest)) -author:lange -subject:(ugaritic,latin,arabic,sermon,preaching,trinity,creeds,syriac,isaiah,psalm,judaism,worship,classics,narration,paradox,literature,philemon,paul,corinthians,homer,oral,rhetoric,"Fathers of the church, Greek")

    ...but it required a ton of exclusions (which is usually an indication that it is not a good rule). The complexity is caused by the fact that Faithlife's subjects don't seem to be consistent. However, I wasn't able to successfully rely on the community tags either.

    Either way, play around with the rule and then tag the stuff you want. Then just use the tag to search the resources going forward. Since any collection you make will be super manual anyway, you might as well just use tags.

  • Beloved Amodeo
    Beloved Amodeo Member Posts: 4,181 ✭✭✭

    Meanwhile, Jesus kept on growing wiser and more mature, and in favor with God and his fellow man.

    International Standard Version. (2011). (Lk 2:52). Yorba Linda, CA: ISV Foundation.

    MacBook Pro MacOS Sequoia 15.2 1TB SSD

  • Beloved Amodeo
    Beloved Amodeo Member Posts: 4,181 ✭✭✭

    MJ. Smith said:

    tried ANDNOT to filter out grammars and courseware why didn't it work?

    Where did you put the parens?

    I tried all kinds of methods ANDNOT (type:grammar, type:courseware) among other ineffective permutations..

    MJ, procedurally what am I doing wrong; what's the fix?

    Meanwhile, Jesus kept on growing wiser and more mature, and in favor with God and his fellow man.

    International Standard Version. (2011). (Lk 2:52). Yorba Linda, CA: ISV Foundation.

    MacBook Pro MacOS Sequoia 15.2 1TB SSD

  • MJ. Smith
    MJ. Smith MVP Posts: 53,653

    How close is this to what you want?

    (type:monograph AND subject:"greek language") ANDNOT (author:emil OR type:grammar OR title:hebrew OR type:courseware)

    which can be shortened to

    (type:monograph AND subject:"greek language") ANDNOT (author:emil OR title:hebrew)

    because the first term limits the results to monographs

    In my library

    (type:monograph AND subject:"greek language")

    produces the same results.

    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."

  • Beloved Amodeo
    Beloved Amodeo Member Posts: 4,181 ✭✭✭

    MJ. Smith said:

    How close is this to what you want?

    (type:monograph AND subject:"greek language") ANDNOT (author:emil OR type:grammar OR title:hebrew OR type:courseware)

    which can be shortened to

    (type:monograph AND subject:"greek language") ANDNOT (author:emil OR title:hebrew)

    because the first term limits the results to monographs

    In my library

    (type:monograph AND subject:"greek language")

    produces the same results.

    MJ you're a wiz! That eliminated all the grammars and courseware and you deftly explained why the contraction works. I can now with confidence use the new (I know that's relative) Boolean expression. Thanks!

    Meanwhile, Jesus kept on growing wiser and more mature, and in favor with God and his fellow man.

    International Standard Version. (2011). (Lk 2:52). Yorba Linda, CA: ISV Foundation.

    MacBook Pro MacOS Sequoia 15.2 1TB SSD

  • Doc B
    Doc B Member Posts: 3,585 ✭✭✭

    MJ. Smith said:

    How close is this to what you want?

    (type:monograph AND subject:"greek language") ANDNOT (author:emil OR type:grammar OR title:hebrew OR type:courseware)

    which can be shortened to

    (type:monograph AND subject:"greek language") ANDNOT (author:emil OR title:hebrew)

    It works better than what I had.

    Because of my non-understanding of how to use parentheses, it isn't clear that I want to include courseware. I have a couple of Gk teaching units I'd like included. I'm assuming I'd put the "type:courseware" in the first parentheses...not sure how to include it with "type:monograph".

    ??

    Eating a steady diet of government cheese, and living in a van down by the river.

  • Doc B
    Doc B Member Posts: 3,585 ✭✭✭

    Kiyah said:

    you might as well just use tags.

    Had I tagged these as I acquired them, that's the route I'd choose.

    I could easily tag them if I had a good collection rule to gather them up for me (thus this post).

    I'd rather use tags in the future as I find manual collection rules inefficient and a defeat of the purpose of the collection tool ITFP.

    Tags it will eventually be, but getting them in a group to tag is the game right now.

    Eating a steady diet of government cheese, and living in a van down by the river.

  • MJ. Smith
    MJ. Smith MVP Posts: 53,653

    (type:monograph AND subject:"greek language") becomes ((type:monograph OR type:courseware) AND subject:"greek language") there is a shorter syntax but given this thread, I prefer this more explicit syntax.

    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."

  • Beloved Amodeo
    Beloved Amodeo Member Posts: 4,181 ✭✭✭

    Doc B said:

    I have a couple of Gk teaching units I'd like included

    Since it's just a couple, I suggest drag and drop from your Library to the Plus these resources field.

    Meanwhile, Jesus kept on growing wiser and more mature, and in favor with God and his fellow man.

    International Standard Version. (2011). (Lk 2:52). Yorba Linda, CA: ISV Foundation.

    MacBook Pro MacOS Sequoia 15.2 1TB SSD

  • Kiyah
    Kiyah Member Posts: 2,828 ✭✭✭✭

    So do you specifically not want any lexicons or grammatically-oriented commentaries? You only want monographs and grammars with a couple of mobile ed courses?

    You could try this if you only wanted the subject "Greek language" as MJ has above:

    type:(monograph,grammar,courseware) AND subject:(greek-language)

  • MJ. Smith
    MJ. Smith MVP Posts: 53,653

    I'd like to point out that much of the "complexity" of this search/selection is in understanding what the OP actually wants. No amount of simplification of the search will solve this part of the problem.

    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."

  • Doc B
    Doc B Member Posts: 3,585 ✭✭✭

    drag and drop

    That's the easy fix, but not a long-term fix. In my view, if you are dragging almost anything, you are losing the entire advantage of the collection tool. As another has suggested, tagging is a better option than manual collection production.

    But yes, it'll get me what I want right now, and that will allow me to tag things.

    Eating a steady diet of government cheese, and living in a van down by the river.

  • Doc B
    Doc B Member Posts: 3,585 ✭✭✭

    Kiyah said:

    So do you specifically not want any lexicons or grammatically-oriented commentaries? You only want monographs and grammars with a couple of mobile ed courses?

    Basically, yes. I want teaching tools, not reference tools. With apologies to Robin Thicke, there are blurred lines there. Some Gk references are easily used as teaching tools, and many teaching tools can also be references. But basically, I want anything that has been (or should be) used in an intro- or second-level Greek class at university or seminary.

    Eating a steady diet of government cheese, and living in a van down by the river.

  • Doc B
    Doc B Member Posts: 3,585 ✭✭✭

    MJ. Smith said:

    understanding what the OP actually wants

    Yes, and that's mostly my fault as I haven't figured out a way to describe it very well.

    An additional complication is, this isn't really what Logos or the tool is designed for, exactly. It is supposed to gather references for Bible study, but I'm trying to gather teaching tools for the Gk language. While this is on the edge (or slightly out of bounds) of what Logos does, I think it would be valuable to a few seminary and college students as well as myself (who is trying to learn Gk without paying a bunch of tuition).

    Ironic, isn't it...as I'm a college dean. The longer I do this job, the less respect I have for higher education. [:|]  But that's another episode.

    Eating a steady diet of government cheese, and living in a van down by the river.

  • Kiyah
    Kiyah Member Posts: 2,828 ✭✭✭✭

    Doc B said:

    Basically, yes. I want teaching tools, not reference tools. With apologies to Robin Thicke, there are blurred lines there. Some Gk references are easily used as teaching tools, and many teaching tools can also be references. But basically, I want anything that has been (or should be) used in an intro- or second-level Greek class at university or seminary.

    I've been playing with this rule to create Greek and Hebrew tools collections for myself since you have inspired me. Here's what my rule looks like based on what you've said (I took some types out of mine based on what you said you didn't want):

    (type:(grammar,monograph,courseware,workbook,study-guide,glossary,encyclopedia,handbook) AND subject:greek-language) OR tag:greek-tools

    The 'greek-tools' tag is for resources that I added manually that didn't fit any reasonable rule, since there were only a handful of items that were missing that I wanted to include. There were items categorized as study guides, workbooks, handbooks, etc. that either went with some of the grammars or functionally acted as grammars so I included those types. I included glossaries and encyclopedias because they defined grammatical/linguistic terms. Feel free to remove the types you don't want.

    I have the exact same rule for the Hebrew collection I created, I just replaced the word 'greek' with the word 'hebrew' for the rule and manually added a couple of resources that weren't automatically included with the hebrew-tools tag.

  • Andrew Perez
    Andrew Perez Member Posts: 119 ✭✭

    https://wiki.logos.com/Example_Collections

    God Bless everyone. A few years ago, I found this article in the link above. I hope this is helpful.

  • DMB
    DMB Member Posts: 3,087 ✭✭

    Kiyah said:

    The 'greek-tools' tag is for resources that I added manually that didn't fit any reasonable rule, since there were only a handful of items that were missing that I wanted to include. There were items categorized as study guides, workbooks, handbooks, etc. that either went with some of the grammars or functionally acted as grammars so I included those types. I included glossaries and encyclopedias because they defined grammatical/linguistic terms. Feel free to remove the types you don't want.

    I have the exact same rule for the Hebrew collection I created, I just replaced the word 'greek' with the word 'hebrew' for the rule and manually added a couple of resources that weren't automatically included with the hebrew-tools tag.

    I know we're not in collections-land. But thru the years, I tagged ResourceType-Language-Tool so that typing 'Lng' brought up all my language tools, 'Lng-Grk narrowed it down to greek, and 'Lng-Grk-Grammars' (as example) brought up specific tools for that language (Akkadian needed cuneiform!).

    But the problem with tags is starting early; a converted collection rule is difficult to apply (as above).

  • Beloved Amodeo
    Beloved Amodeo Member Posts: 4,181 ✭✭✭

    Doc B said:

    who is trying to learn Gk without paying a bunch of tuition

    You may benefit from the reference and YouTube series in this thread:

    https://community.logos.com/forums/p/205755/1197292.aspx#1197292

    Meanwhile, Jesus kept on growing wiser and more mature, and in favor with God and his fellow man.

    International Standard Version. (2011). (Lk 2:52). Yorba Linda, CA: ISV Foundation.

    MacBook Pro MacOS Sequoia 15.2 1TB SSD

  • Dave Hooton
    Dave Hooton MVP Posts: 35,828

    Kiyah said:

    (type:(grammar,monograph,courseware,workbook,study-guide,glossary,encyclopedia,handbook) AND subject:greek-language) OR tag:greek-tools

    Unfortunately, this rule will exclude: courseware, study-guide, workbook, encyclopedia, handbook  because they do not use greek-language  bible.n.t. is better, so try:

    • (type:(courseware, study-guide, workbook, encyclopedia, handbook) AND subject:bible.n.t.) 
      • this gives an extra 19 results for me (courseware and study-guide).
      • check the subject data for workbook, encyclopedia, and handbook to see what is useful for you.
    • (type:(grammar,monograph,glossary) AND subject:greek-language)
      • gives 20 results for me (the same as the original rule!)

    Just combine the two type rules with OR  ---> I already included the necessary (..)

    Dave
    ===

    Windows 11 & Android 13

  • Dave Hooton
    Dave Hooton MVP Posts: 35,828

    MJ like you I'm in the dark as to Doc's ultimate goal, but I was able to produce a manageable collection with this rule:

    type:monograph, subject:greek ANDNOT author:emil, title:hebrew -type:grammar, -type:course

    However, I have a question; why is it that what was once a method of excluding references no longer appears to be effective has something changed or am I recalling amiss? And, to be clear I'm referring to placing a ( - ) sign before your value of reference. It doesn't work in the library either.

    1. It needs parentheses to clarify your intention either side of the ANDNOT
    2. type:monograph, subject:greek should be type:monograph OR subject:greek
      1. you can't mix comma , with other operators
    3. author:emil, title:hebrew  should be  author:emil OR title:hebrew for the same reason.
    4. -type:grammar, -type:course  should be -type:grammar -type:course
      1. the comma (OR)  conflicts with wanting to exclude both types i.e. it reads exclude type:grammar OR exclude type:course rather than exclude type:grammar AND exclude type:course.

    So then, this rule should be: (type:monograph OR subject:greek) ANDNOT  (author:emil OR title:hebrew) -type:grammar -type:course

    And the - retains its ability to exclude terms.

    Dave
    ===

    Windows 11 & Android 13