a question from an Accordance User

Donovan R. Palmer said:

I will not spend another penny on resources

You sure? I just looked and they have a massive sale going on ... up to 69% off [;)]

I have so little confidence in the future of Accordance under the current management that even though I own almost everything they offer, I'm buying all my favorite resources in Logos. 

Donovan R. Palmer said:

There are actually a decent number of dual platform users around here. 

I use Logos and Accordance together, each day. A lot can be done quicker on Accordance. Certainly, the graphics. I'm currently tempted to get the Masorah Thesaurus ... Logos CitedBy with my masorah collection is fine for references mainly.  We'll see.

DMB said:

I use Logos and Accordance together, each day. A lot can be done quicker on Accordance. Certainly, the graphics

To be fair, this is where I still constructively (and sincerely) critique Logos. I applaud that particularly in version 10 they addressed the speed of the software. This is awesome. It was a longstanding complaint by many.

However, it is not just speed of software, but adjusting the user interface in a way that reduces friction in workflows. I have felt that Logos has been a bit tone deaf on this in regard to the language and textual studies crowd. There is a lot of wasted space and inefficiency.  So for example, recently I posted in the desktop forum that the tooltip popup that shows parsing information is almost unusable, but on the other hand the information window is too heavy and inefficient.  Also, even the formatting of the text, the slider bars, etc, really take up unnecessary space when you are trying to put a number of texts together side by side. The inability to adjust and fine tune each text pane at a more granular level creates an unnecessary one size fits all which is inefficient and crude. I hope someone can add this to the equation at some point.

DMB said:

I'm currently tempted to get the Masorah Thesaurus

This is definitely a cool tool!

Mark Allison said:

I have so little confidence in the future of Accordance under the current management that even though I own almost everything they offer, I'm buying all my favorite resources in Logos. 

This is where I'm at. Duplicating all of the commentaries in particular isn't feasible at this point, but I picked up some legacy library materials and am planning to get one of the academic packages to unlock the feature sets. That should be plenty to get started with. And to my great surprise, the lower level legacy packages even included some books I don't have in Accordance but would like to have. So that was pretty nice. 

Kristin said:

Jonathan Huber said:

I picked up some legacy library materials

I keep hearing this phrase, but I'm kind of confused by it. What does "legacy" mean in this context?

There are Logos Legacy Libraries.  Basically the books that were sold as part of Logos 5 through 9.  There are multiple levels for each Logos version too.  Starter->Bronze->Silver->Gold-:>etc.  You can find them on Logos.com by searching for "Legacy Library" or by going to Books and Courses then choosing Legacy Libraries under Bundles.

Steve

John said:

Donovan R. Palmer said:

There are actually a decent number of dual platform users around here. 

Am I the only triple user? 

Yes I invested in Accordance too. I have it installed, but I rarely use it.

I still use Bibleworks regularly. And I have a very large investment in logos, but I’m still learning how to use it. Learning very slowly, I might add. 

Another triple user here.

Each of the three packages has its strengths and makes for a good toolkit :-)

Kristin said:

I keep hearing this phrase, but I'm kind of confused by it. What does "legacy" mean in this context?

It's hard to get a feel for how Logos works without having any books you'd actually use, and the legacy packages (which Chris described above) are on sale right now, so they're a budget-friendly way to get a decent starter library.

Kristin said:

Jonathan Huber said:

It's hard to get a feel for how Logos works without having any books you'd actually use

That's my problem too, and I wish I could just go ahead and buy a practical resource, such as a biblical language, just to experiment with the program. However, I keep hearing about major discounts, like 30%, on your first purchase. So I feel like I literally can't buy anything at all until I am 100% sure I would never buy a package.

I hadn't seen anything about a 30% discount, but I just searched and found a reference to a 30% discount on a logos 10 upgrade for people who already own packages as a launch special when 10 was released. Not sure that's still available. If you're eligible for the academic program, you should apply for that. It's a nice discount. https://www.logos.com/academic-discount 

Kristin said:

,

To be honest, I don't remember where I had seen that 30% of your first order thing. It is possible I misread it and had seen the upgrade discount, I frankly don't know.

To be sure, you might call CS. But I 'think' that was when BW was dieing ... at the time I took advantage of the Accordance offer (better).

But if I  were in your shoes, I'd get maybe the Logos 10 Academic Fundementals and give it a test run. Logos is true to their 30-day refund. They don't question, etc. But the package has a decent test base to see how Bible Word Study (BWS) works (eg moving into Philo greek as well as NA28 etc) plus the interlinears and how they work. And the various tools. Also, the engine comes with the great moving parts ... Cited By, MultiBook, the excellent (but trying) search engine, etc. It'll give you a good test case for your work.

We all have opinions (!), but for original languages, Logos's advantage is the big library. I very much love, at bottom of BWS's, the supplied searches of my OL library ... I'm truly humbled by the access.

DMB said:

We all have opinions (!), but for original languages, Logos's advantage is the big library. I very much love, at bottom of BWS's, the supplied searches of my OL library ... I'm truly humbled by the access.

The big library is breath taking. When in history have we had this mass of materials available to the common person with powerful technology? I feel so privileged. After I am done exegeting a section of scripture, I love looking down through the ages to see how the church has translated and applied that scripture. I recently bought into all the Church Fathers resources and will continue add resources that build out the picture in other eras. 

The other thing that a large library brings is the widest and most up to date selection of journals. Who can have too many journals? I hope Logos continues to work on this with a goal to bring us the latest scholarship whenever possible. 

Last, I stopped buying paper books or Kindle whenever I can avoid it. To have my home ‘seminary‘ library accessible at the click of a mouse, wherever I am in the world, is invaluable in my studies.

The big deal to make this library work is to aggressively use layouts, be willing to dynamically open and close resources in my workflows, use collections and tag, tag, tag. I know Factbook has its critics, but more than once it has turned up something I did not know. Smart Search is also a tool which I believe is only going to mature more and more. 

This is a completely different approach than how I use Accordance where I tend to be much more static on a carefully selected set of resources. I am finding though, particularly with the disastrous release of Accordance 14 nearly to years ago and the unfulfilled promises since then to put it right, I am using it less and less. Logos is very capable at textual studies. Also, what they market as ‘clutter’ is in some cases resources that I am finding extremely useful as the power of Logos to deal with large libraries continues to grow. 

While I am sad about the state of Accordance and hope they don’t crash like so many others have, I am truly excited about what Logos 11 might bring us. I think it is a very good thing that Logos has returned to its primary product and mission, alongside adding additional cash flow so that we can see all the services and platforms develop. It is an exciting time for computer assisted Bible Study!