Index of Bible Studies

This is a new version of the Index of Bible Studies in Logos, with the addition of some new books (now 2338) and about 2000 new links (now almost 78000). Most of the new links were provided by MJ Smith - thanks! Since it has been awhile since I last wrote the full instructions, here they are again.

This file contains links to sermons, meditations, outlines, journal articles, Bible study guides, non versified commentaries, and more that do not appear in the Passage Guide. (Exception: some sermons now appear in the Passage Guide, but did not when I started, and I thought I would not remove them.) It is useful especially when preparing Bible studies or sermons or doing personal study on a certain passage, to find more ideas on the passage from your library that you can use.

To install the Index, download the Index Bible Studies.docx file, then use the Personal Books tool of Logos to create a new personal book. You can use whatever title you like, but it is best to set the type to "Bible commentary". On page 3 of this thread you can find a book cover that you can optionally use. The message https://community.logos.com/forums/p/65323/1093313.aspx#1093313 gives graphical instructions for this installation.

The index contains the books in my Logos library, and a few that have been indexed even though I don't own them. There is a list of the included books at the end of the Index Bible Studies.docx file. Naturally, I cannot include books that are in your library but not in mine. However, it is possible to exclude books that are in my library but not in yours, which makes the resulting personal book easier to use. There are two ways to create this personal index:

Method 1 (Windows only)

1. Download and unzip the MyIndex.zip file.
2. There should then be two files in a directory. Start the Index Bible Studies.exe program, which will open Logos (if it is not already open), read the names of all the books in your library, and then create a file My Index Bible Studies.rtf in your Documents directory.
3. Continue with the steps under "Both methods".

Method 2 (Windows and Macintosh)

1. In Logos, open the Library.
2. Click on the three vertical dots on the top right of the Library window, and in the menu that opens choose Print/Export.
3. In the Print/Export window, click on the Save as file: XML link, and choose in which directory to save the Library.xml file.
4. Go to https://www.laparola.net/indexlogos.php , click the Choose File button, navigate to where you saved the Library.xml file, and then choose it.
5. Click the Submit button on that page.
6. If all goes well, the browser will download a file called myindex.rtf, which probably will be saved in the Downloads directory of your computer.
7. Continue with the steps under "Both methods".

Both Methods

1. Open the My Index Bible Studies.rtf or myindex.rtf file in Word or another word processor and save it as a docx file.
2. In Logos, create a personal book from that docx file, in the same way as described above, setting the type to "Bible commentary".

4024.Index Bible Studies.docx

6354.myindex.zip

Here is a new version of the files for the Index of Bible Studies, with another 171 books indexed to add 3253 new links, taking the totals to 2,509 and 81,221. The instructions to use these files are in my message of February 8, 2024, which is 6 messages before this one in the forum.

0257.Index Bible Studies.docx

7382.MyIndex.zip

To be included in the Index, I either have to own the resource (so I can manually index it) or someone else has to index it and send the links to me. And my budget for buying further books is very limited. Having said that, there are not many books on theology in the Index. There are lots of references to Bible passages in books on theology, but they can be found in Logos with the "Cited by" tool so they don't need to be duplicated in the Index. Only when there are discussions or explanations of a Bible passage do I include it in the Index.

I do wonder if it is possible to build a collection of those books, also to find books that are not yet in the index and maybe create supplemental information to it.

Has anyone found a way to build a collection of the included books?

At the end of the .docx file there is a list of books that are included in the index, which could be used to make a collection (either of the books included or of the books not included). It would not be precise, however, as sometimes I had to change the name I used eg when two books have the same name.

[quote]

Richard will add entries if you send him the data. I have a collection based on tagging but it is not a practical solution

But be quick [:)] I expect to finish and publish the next version of the file (with all the books of Logos Max and various other books) next week, before the release of the next version of Logos which should have new base packages.

Hi Richard, while I was working on tagging the books included (I'll report on that later), I found the problematic links below in my index PB that I made with your program. My library does actually not include these books. The other thing that these links had in common was that they all showed in bold and italic, different from all other links....

Thanks for those. They were all cases of missing ]] at the end, or extra spaces or tabs at the end of the line. I have corrected them all and a few other cases I found, and they will be fixed in the new version I'll publish next week.