LOGOS: Your recent response to Metadata Tagging Proposals

My apologies for the slow response on many of the correction proposals. As we've done some hiring in Text Development and we continue to work out the kinks out of the system on our end, I'm hopeful that we'll be addressing another good-sized chunk of them soon.

Some of the difficulty here is that, while many of these metadata fields are transparently accessible to the user for the first time in Logos 4, they already have a long history with functional implications for how books are processed and how the software uses them, so user collections are not the only concern. In addition, as is obvious, we've often not been very successful at maintaining consistency over the years and between thousands of resources, leaving users guessing as to what our intentions are for the different fields now that they're plainly visible.

The proposal was intended to distinguish Greek lexicons from Hebrew, Aramaic and other ancient languages but also to help distinguish lexicons from other resources of type:dictionary and from English dictionaries like Merriam-Webster, Oxford Concise.  It seems arcane that these should all have language English.

However, the response is inadequate because the proposal is at least 5 months old and no alternative is given. It does not recognise the need or purpose of the proposal. If the alternative is to use the 'language xxxx' in Subjects then this should have been stated. Note that  this field needs attention as language is not supplied for at least 7 of my lexicons (do I have to list these?).

We are actually planning to split the dictionary type into a few more types that will be more specific. Once we've sorted through the category and are ready to launch the changes, we'll make an announcement with complete details so that you can adjust your collections accordingly.

Using subjects for this purpose would be more appropriate. When we make the change to the dictionary types, we'll also make sure we have consistency in the subjects to make this easier.

This response does not recognise a need that has been widely discussed for many years and is just as applicable to L4 as it was to L3. To illustrate its inadequacy my library contains 5 Bible Notes of which 3 have the title "Study Bible" and my commentaries (type:Bible Commentary) include 7 with the title "Study Bible"! Who makes the decision that "the user may want to appear in the Passage Guide"? Is Logos listening?

Right. Our use of "Bible Notes" has been terribly inconsistent to the point that you can't really force it into a pattern. I ought to have been more clear that this is an attempt to provide a simpler definition that requires corrections on our end to implement rather than an explanation of things as they stand.

As for "who decides", my intent was to say that simple and broad categories leave us with fewer arbitrary judgments to make between types of books organized and indexed by Bible verse, which leads to more straighforward behavior within the software for such books and more flexibility for the user to categorize and prioritize what shows up in his Passage Guide. (Also, just to be clear, both "Bible Notes" and "Commentary" show up in the Passage Guide, so this particular distinction doesn't affect that function.)

But the following are both tagged as "Ancient manuscript"!

Yes. There are a couple of cases where this type was mistakenly used for translations. These will be corrected to conform to the standard use which has been applied everywhere else.

Anyway, even though we've been slow to respond--and not able to change everything--please keep the proposals coming. Dynamic collections open up a lot of new possibilities for using of our metadata, which weren't necessarily envisioned in the past, but which can be very powerful. Knowing how you're using them--and how you wish you could use them--helps us improve the system.