How are you using the Collections tool?

I just watched a recorded webinar on using Collections. It was a good webinar, and it made me want to start creating and using collections. Unfortunately, I have no idea what I would do with a collection. The webinar demonstrated how a collection could be searched. That is not something I would find useful. What else can you do with collections? What are some things you do with collections that make Logos better or easier to use?

Is there a way to open all books in a collection at once? That might be useful. For example, if I created a collection with commentaries on Ephesians, it would be helpful to open all of those books into a tab at once.

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DMB

Well, if you rule out searches, you still have Factbook and the Guides. But their use is similar to searches (on a reference or key word/phrase). Have you tried either? Each includes collections as desired.

Then, there's your library … on the left facet panel, there's a collections section, for quickly finding a special collection of your books.

There's many more (eg the CitedBy tool, Text Comparisons, etc).

Actually, I tag my books (the alternative). Then they show up in my library as a column for quick use.

Mark Smith

You can sort your library by collections using the Library sidebar. Once your library shows just your collection you can select them all, right click and open them all at once.

My Library is pretty extensive so collections help me keep it organized. I use them to help me remember and quicky discover books I have on a specific subject. I have LOTS of these collections created over many years. When I purchase a new book I look to see if it belongs in one of these collections. Minimal upkeep. If you create a dynamic collection or use tags to mark your resources and then create a collection, Logos will do the work for you in maintaining your collections.

Some of my other uses:

I do use collections for searches. Might be the biggest way I use them. If I am looking only for a subject that deals with family life, I have a collection of books dealing with family life that I can search. This saves time going through search results.

I use collections in Guides like the passage guide. For example I have a collection of my Word Study books. I have that in my Passage Guide and it will show me words in those books found in the passage I am studying. This saves time and makes those resources easily accessible. I have a Favorite Commentaries collection that is also in the passage guide.

I use collections to focus on the main books I want to see with the parallel resources panel. Check "Show in parallel books" in the collection container to activate this.

Logos does not need collections as it once did. They have categorized books in many, many more Types than they first did. They have added functionality in the Passage and other guides that basically duplicates the functionality I created using collections. The on-going development of Factbook obviates some of the need for collections as well. Smart Search may make searching precise enough for many people.

Sean Hachem

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1392568#Comment_1392568

Thanks, Mark. (I don't know how to quote only a particular portion of your response.) It makes sense that "Logos does not need collections as it once did. They have categorized books in many, many more Types than they first did." I am able to use the built-in sorting functions to find what I'm looking for. I'll think about how I might be able to create a useful parallel book set with Collections. Thanks!

All comments

DMB

Then, there's your library … on the left facet panel, there's a collections section, for quickly finding a special collection of your books.

There's many more (eg the CitedBy tool, Text Comparisons, etc).

Actually, I tag my books (the alternative). Then they show up in my library as a column for quick use.

Mark Smith

You can sort your library by collections using the Library sidebar. Once your library shows just your collection you can select them all, right click and open them all at once.

Some of my other uses:

I use collections to focus on the main books I want to see with the parallel resources panel. Check "Show in parallel books" in the collection container to activate this.

Sean Hachem

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1392561#Comment_1392561

Thanks. I don't use Factbook (I have tried it many times, just haven't found it to be useful). I have never used Guides. I just watched a help video to see what they are. Some of those look interesting. Thanks for mentioning those. Even if I don't end up using Collections, I'll probably use Guides.

I'll think about maybe putting some resources I use regularly in a collection to make it easier to find them in my library. Thanks for the tip!

Benjamin V. Rideaux

Yea, when you're doing work such as your guides (Passage, Topic, Exegetical), Factbook, and when searching for other things, your books are there in the order you placed it for searches, sometimes you don't know it, In your prepping stage but they are searching stuff for you. Logos does the heavy lifting for you. I don't know if you want to do this or not but I learned a lot watching those videos especially Collections videos, I got very excited about MP Seminars at mpseminars.com. They give bitesize videos and extensive ones on everything, plus you get a Certificate of completions.

Sean Hachem

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1392568#Comment_1392568

Benjamin V. Rideaux

If you're up to it, I can share with you where I get my trainings at MPSeminars.com (a monthly fee or yearly fee is involved for that) the teachings is priceless. my email address is apostlerideaux@gmail.com then we can both see it together how you can utilize it. If not, that's ok too, just utilize the MP Seminars website.

Dave Hooton

@Sean Hachem Is there a way to open all books in a collection at once? That might be useful. For example, if I created a collection with commentaries on Ephesians, it would be helpful to open all of those books into a tab at once.

Select All, right-click and chose how to open

But you can do the same thing in Library if you use a Rule for filtering or use the Filter sidebar.

Unfortunately, I have no idea what I would do with a collection. The webinar demonstrated how a collection could be searched. That is not something I would find useful.

Searching a specific collection of books will eliminate spurious results e.g. my collection of LXX Bibles in English as opposed to Greek (subject:O.T.--Greek = LXX whilst lang:Eng = text language).

You can compare a collection of bibles in Text Comparison.

I often define a collection so I do not forget the rule for filtering Library (Cloud books are not included in a collection) e.g. addeddate:<greater Dec 22, 2025> license:perm (this is more precise than the Library sidebar filter).

Tony Walker

I use them for smart collections based on tags. I have a collection called Anderson University Textbooks and any book with the tag mdiv shows up there. I have a Heiser Recommended Reading collection and any book with the tag heiserrecommended (from a page on his website) will show up there. I also have an Edwards collection that includes any book with the author Jonathan Edwards while also having some Jonathan Edwards related books manually added that were not written by JE.

Another is a Best Commentaries collection. if a commentary shows up in the top spots at bestcommentaries website then I tag it and I can easily see which ones I might want to try first.

I don’t know if it is in the video but if you go to documents then public and then filter by Collections you can see 2,021 different user created collections. sort them by most users and you'll see what are the most popular collections.

Don Awalt

I actually use them very minimally if at all. I have meaning to check on the reason I stopped, to see if it was fixed - years ago, having a lot of Collections made performance close to unbearable, as the collections get built dynamically. Has that been fixed? I found I had delete many of my collections as the app just ran way too slow.

Mark Smith

having a lot of Collections made performance close to unbearable, as the collections get built dynamically. Has that been fixed?

Don't know about 'fixed' but I never notice any slow down when using a collection.

Sean Hachem

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1392581#Comment_1392581

Thanks, Don. If this is still the case, it's a good reason to avoid Collections. I typically have 50 or so resources open all the time. I have wondered if that is part of the reason for the generally poor performance. But some Logos builds are faster than others. Build 47 keeps locking up and forcing me to restart.

Sean Hachem

@Mark Smith I may be doing something wrong, but I don't have an option to open all books in a collection (or by sorting any other way).

Mark Smith

I typically have 50 or so resources open all the time.

Must say that's a LOT of open resources. Have you explored the parallel resources tool? That might help you cut down on open resources.

Build 47 keeps locking up and forcing me to restart.

I'd be interested in knowing more about your computer: RAM, graphics processor, type of hard drive, CPU, operating system.

DMB

Just info Sean, I keep maybe a hundred books open and no problem … for 10+ years! Likely another issue?

Mark Smith

@Mark Smith I may be doing something wrong, but I don't have an option to open all books in a collection (or by sorting any other way).

I don't know how many you've selected, so there might be a limit. Here is what I see:

Sean Hachem

@Mark Smith

OS Name Microsoft Windows 11 Pro
Version 10.0.26200 Build 26200

Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) Ultra 7 165H

Model Micron MTFDKBA2T0TGD-2BK15ABLT
File System NTFS
Size 1.86 TB (2
Free Space 1.36 TB (1

Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 64.0 GB
Total Physical Memory 63.4 GB
Available Physical Memory 39.7 GB
Total Virtual Memory 67.4 GB
Available Virtual Memory 38.7 GB
Page File Space 4.00 GB

Adapter Type Intel(R) Arc(TM) Graphics Family
Adapter Description Intel(R) Arc(TM) Graphics
Adapter RAM 2.00 GB (2

Adapter Description NVIDIA RTX 2000 Ada Generation Laptop GPU (8GB GDDR6)

Sean Hachem

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1392588#Comment_1392588

You are correct. It appears the limit is 10 books. Thanks!

Mark Smith

@Sean Hachem

Your computer specs are robust so there's no reason for it to lock up based on that. I don't have an idea of what could be causing the problem.

If you want to pursue this, I'd create a separate thread and attach log files.

https://support.logos.com/hc/en-us/articles/360027869132-How-to-Enable-and-Submit-Log-Files

Dr. Nathan Parker

I create various collections of what I want to search, then I use the Precise Search to search them.

Paul Gibson

A tool that I used several times today is Text Comparison. I have three collections I've created for using this tool: Bibles - Top 10 (based on web searches of "top 10 English Bibles" ), Bibles - Large (about 25) and Bibles - All (about 50). I usually use the Top 10, but occasionally use the others.

Also, I have recently been adding tags to my commentaries for the type (application, devotional, exegetical, etc.) When I do a search, I can limit it to a certain type of commentary. Another possibility is making a collections of your favorite commentaries for books of the Bible: John - Top 5 Commentaries.

Don Awalt

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1392582#Comment_1392582

not ‘a’ collection, but if a system has a good number of collections. They are all being dynamically updated.

Mark Smith

not ‘a’ collection, but if a system has a good number of collections. They are all being dynamically updated.

And no problem that way, either. I have over 700 collections. 😁 Perhaps it slows down startup but I haven't noticed any slowdown while using Logos, but slowdown means different things to different people on different systems.

Sean Hachem

Thanks for all the help and suggestions! I'm going to start using Guides. I can see that those are really great at pulling information together. (For example, I used to search through grammars to see if they offered insight into phrases in certain verses. Guides looks in all my grammars and shows me which ones have entries about the verses I am looking at. Amazing!) They don't get everything, but they get a lot. In Guides, I can have multiple Commentaries sections. I have one set up with my preferred commentaries (defined using Collections) and a second Commentaries section sorted by type. It looks like I have to manually add each commentary to my "Preferred Commentaries" Collection, but that's not really a big deal. It might be nice if I could add multiple series (like the EGGNT and the NAC), but it looks like only one series can be added to each Collection. For series like the ICC, I would want to select books individually anyway. Some of those commentaries are good, and some are not so good.