I want to create a truly custom Guide

I am interested in creating a custom guide that is for background information on a particular book of the Bible. I have succeeded at creating a custom guide and adding sections for literary typing and outlines. In the lengthy list of predefined information, the rest of what OI need is not listed.

I want to be able to add a section that will

combine all the information in my library on the authorship of a book
combine all the information in my library on the date of a book
combine all the information in my library on the provenance of a book
combine all the information in my library on the purpose of a book
combine all the information in my library on the Audience of a book
combine all the information in my library on the text of a book
Overview if the message or purpose

There may be others that would be useful.

I know I can search for these, but I want to make them a standard part of a guide that I can apply to any book of the Bible. These are standard parts of any study of a book of the Bible., considered part of the preparation before diving into the details.

What I really want is the ability to build and reuse queries into the databases used in Logos. Then turn those queries into sections in a guide. Then I could build my own guides at will.

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Francis

This is already found in Factbook (under the "Origin" subsection, you will find the likes of author, date, etc.):

Joe Hightower

That is helpful. I did not know that section existed. Why can I not find this section to add to a custom Guide?

Joe Hightower

It appears that the factbook cannot be customized?

MJ. Smith

No, Factbook cannot be customized. In addition to Factbook, the Bible Book Explorer provides much of the information you desire.

Joe Hightower

Thank you also. I was just poking around in that tool.

One thing I wish for though is the ability to customize more or make my own arrangements. These pre-existing guides are only structured the way that Logos thinks, not the way that I think. There is a tremendous amount of information that is not relevant the question I am asking in the factbook. It helps that they provide the category selection at the top allowing for "All", ""Biblical" etc. But even if I select "Biblical" there are tons of things that I am not interested in. The material that I am interested in is scattered across several categories

It seems to me that this limits the power of the software - to search a broad range of resources for a specific topic, allowing for focused research.

I would like to create something that only focuses on my question, and that I will reuse frequently.

Steven Veach

One way you might do this without the guide is to run each search and then save it to a folder in your favorites. Name the link whatever you want. Then, when you want to do this for a particular book, you just open each link, change the book, and run the search. It requires a few more steps, which is annoying, but Logos can sometimes be irritating. They do not think of endless customization but cater to the lowest common denominator. What most people want, or need, or how their target customer thinks. That is not often everyone.

Steven

Joe Hightower

Thanks Steven.

Between these inputs I think I can construct something to get what I want.

I do think though that Logos would benefit from thinking through a strategy where they have a basic construct for querying (which they do) and predefined task that it is applied to (which they do) and then opening up the basic query and interface to allow users to construct they own arrangements (which they do in very limited ways.) The power of Logos would grow substantially.

Under this, anyone could implement any approach to exegesis/hermeneutics and arrange the data in a way that they find useful.

The best example I can think of is from my own experience with applied statistics. There are application such as R that supply methods (packages) that can be configured to support many different analytic problems. It is extensible so that new methods can be implemented by the user base and made available to others. Then there are software applications such as Tableau, where everything is canned and you can only choose whatever the Publisher allows you to choose. If your analysis does not fit the methods they have, then they tool is of no use, or a solution has to be kluged together.

It seems that Logos has the potential to be the former, but has chosen to be the latter. They are very powerful for querying data, but they are too canned when trying to arrange that data for display and interpretation.