Packaged collections, tags, & collection building

Logos collections need to be distinct from series, as series means a publishers series. So IMO Logos shouldn't put resource collection names in the series field (though in this case it could have put JSNTS in some of the series fields, and Studies in NT Greek in the others).

But going back to collections themselves. One big problem with Logos providing this information is that the standard metadata is the same for all users (by standard I mean the metadata before you edit it). It would be pretty hard for them to push personalised metadata depending on your purchase history. That matters because several resources appear in multiple collections, including some you don't own. The tags field is currently the only place where this data could be stored, but I think it could get confusing. For example, the ESV bible appears at least in the following collections/packages. That's a lot of tags:

Christian Home Library
Bible Study Library
Leaders' Library
Original Languages Library
Scholar's Library
Scholar's Library: Silver
Scholar's Library: Gold
Scholar's Library: Platinum
Portfolio
ESV Study Bible

Even if you ignore base packages, some resources (e.g. WBC commentaries) have been in about half-a-dozen collections. And in a large library, you'd have potentially hundreds of tags/series cluttering up the various drop-down menus. So personally, I think it best that Logos allows us to tag in the way that we want.

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/182488#Comment_182488

I'm not talking about cataloging them according to the package in which they appear, only the specific Logos collection in which they are sold. The ESV for example doesn't appear in any of the JSNTS or JSOTS collections. How many of the volumes in the Studies in New Testament Greek and JSNTS Collection actually appear in other collections? Not that many.

To spare the 'Series' tag, there could be a tag called 'Collections' which identified all 17 volumes of the Studies in New Testament Greek and JSNTS Collection as belonging to that collection.

This isn't about personalizing metadata based on our purchase history, it's about cataloging works which Logos has sold in specific collections, as belonging to those collections. I don't think it's that difficult. We would still be able to add our own
tags, it would just make collection building easier if there was a
little more cataloging in publication work.

Mark Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/182506#Comment_182506

To spare the 'Series' tag, there could be a tag called 'Collections' which identified all 17 volumes of the Studies in New Testament Greek and JSNTS Collection as belonging to that collection.

And I for one wouldn't want that because down the road these resources will probably be unbundled and available individually. Why would I care about the way they were originally packaged?

I understand your point but don't think action on Logos' part is they way to resolve the concern. Instead it is to take the issue into our own hands and create the tagging we each desire. In this case we'd desire different things so I think that's why I think Logos should allow it to be resolved on the user level.

I am sure this isn't the response you want, but as a user I would not be interested in Logos doing what you are suggesting, so I do support Logos' lack of action. Two users, two opinions.

Praiser

This is where the star ratings can work to your advantage. I picked up the use and benefits of ratings and how they can help from some older forum discussions. This is what I did with what I learned... When you receive resource downloads from Logos they come with a rating of 0. If you give all of your resources that you currently have a rating of 2 or higher it helps in "sorting." I know that all of my resource that have a 2 star rating are ones that I really haven't reviewed. If it has a 1 star rating -- it is a resource that I really don't care for. When my new resources are downloaded, all I have to do is go to collections and create a new collection with "rating:0" then up comes all the newly downloaded resources. I drag them into the new collection and then delete the "rating:0" from the "start with resources matching" line. When you are finished with your collection go to your library and put "rating:0" in the search, from there it is easy to change the ratings to 2 or more and add tags, making it easy to locate new resources when they are downloaded.

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/182519#Comment_182519

I understand that you disagree Mark (Smith), and that's fine. I'm just not sure I understand your objection yet. If the items are published individually, how would cataloging them as part of a Logos collection have any negative impact? You would still be able to treat them as individual items, you could just ignore the contents of the 'Collection' tag.

Sure I can tag them individually, but it takes time to do so and this is the kind of cataloging I would expect to be performed in publication, just as I would do if I were cataloging in a library. I used to be a cataloger and my Masters degree was in information management, so my perspective on cataloging and metadata control is likely to be a little different to that of others here.

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/182519#Comment_182519

Praiser, thanks for your suggestion about using ratings. I'll look into that. It will be a little more complicated when multiple collections are downloaded (I had four collections download the other day), but I'll certainly check that out.

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/182522#Comment_182522

* mytag:Studies in New Testament Greek and JSNTS Collection

That's how I do mine, however I hope you know that when a tag has spaces in it, you need to enclose it in quotation marks or you won't get the results you think you'll be getting. Each of the other words after the first one will be found any any field, not in the tags field, and all those will be ANDed together. So you'd want to use

mytag:"Studies in New Testament Greek and JSNTS Collection"

Actually, I abbreviate that to "Studies in NT Greek & JSNTS."

I do all my tagging at the time the items get downloaded. I use the system described by another user (I can't remember who) of assigning 2 stars to everything in my library once it's been downloaded and tagged. That just means "don't yet know how I'd rate this" -- then later rate them: 1 star for not very useful (though not bad enough to hide the resource), 3 stars for average/OK or worth exploring more to make a more refined decision, 4 stars for very good, and 5 stars for the very best, essential, favorite resources. That way I can tell that any resources with zero stars haven' been tagged yet. When I purchase a bunch of resources together as part of a collection, I select them all and assign them all the tag "Bundle:collection name." That way I can later distinguish between books I bought as part of a base package (which get tagged "Base:L3 Scholar's" or whatever) and those I bought individually.

Mark is right (both Marks, actually). Some resources appear in more than one collection/bundle (and I'm not talking about base packages here). Eight of the books in the Pauline Studies Library, for example, are also part of the Perspectives on Paul collection. It could get unwieldy if they include tags (or a new "Collection" metadata field) for all the collections this book is sold with. Anyway, the collections can change. They are not so much a piece of data about the book as a marketing strategy, which I'm not sure it makes sense to permanently encode with the book. For people who want to keep track of what collection they bought a book as part of, tagging is a fairly straightforward way to do it.

One thing which is missing in L4 which L3 used to be able to show you is your account summary, showing you what licenses you own and what resources are part of what license. This is perhaps what you were hoping to achieve by having the Collection you bought something with included in a metadata field. I think a better solution would be to provide an account summary feature again like what was in L3. Or else to make that info accessible by logging on to your account on the logos.com website. Right now it's impossible to tell whether you've accidentally bought anything twice (as a stand-alone and as part of a collection) so that you could request a refund of the stand-alone if you didn't buy it too long ago.

So I'm encouraging you that the need for your suggestion is a real one, but I'd go about meeting that need in a different way than what you've asked for. Hope you don't object to my refinement. I'm not trying to shoot down your request at all.

Mark Smith

I'm just not sure I understand your objection yet.

I wrote a long detailed response and then decided this is silly to drag out. It really doesn't matter. We do disagree. Logos will do what it thinks best. I can in fact ignore the info if Logos chooses to include it.

I replied to your posting because you seemed to think this should be an open and shut case of 'go do it.' I wanted you to know I don't agree with that. Logos may have had a good reason why they chose not to do this. There is no point in further guesses since we aren't voting on the feature and Logos hasn't given us their reasoning.

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/182533#Comment_182533

Rosie, thanks for your thoughts and for sharing your own method. Yes, I did include the quote marks when actually entering the rule. Thanks for showing me that I can use abbreviations when writing rules, that's very useful to know. [:)]

I certainly haven't disputed that some works are contained in more than one collection, I just don't see why it would be considered a cataloguing decision with a negative impact. In what sense would they get unwieldy?

Collections may be discontinued, but when someone buys a set of works in a particular collection then they already own it, so why not catalogue all the works as a collection? The collection isn't going to change, the items are still on their hard drive and they still bought them as a collection, and they may still wish to refer to them as a collection. As you say, 'For people who want to keep track of what collection they bought a book as part of, tagging is a fairly straightforward way to do it', so why not tag them before publication? I don't see the difference between tagging them before and after publication. [:^)]

There's no difference between adding multiple collection tags and adding multiple subject tags. In both cases the field is being used for the specific purpose for which it was created, to store relevant metadata. In any case, as both you and Mark suggest (and as I am doing), we can simply do the cataloguing work ourselves, so all you're suggesting is that we do what Logos doesn't do. This doesn't make individual resources unwieldy anymore than stuffing the subject field with multiple subject headings makes individual resources unwieldy.

Mark, I don't know why Logos doesn't do this, but that's ok because I'm not speculating on why they don't do this. I'm not guessing about what they do or don't do, the part I'm not clear on is why you think this would have negative results. I'm not clear on what negative results you believe would ensue from tagging collections before publication. This is important to me if I'm going to tag all my collections in this way after publication. I'd like to know what might break, explode, or overflow if I keep doing this! [um][st]

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/182665#Comment_182665

Mark, this post from Mark Barnes is the type of thing I like.

>

We do have tags. We have multiple tags in one field. There's no reason why you can't use that field for multiple purposes. I'm not sure exactly what your purposes are, but from your earlier example, you could tag a book like this:

lang-Greek, boughtdate-2010_05_02, deal-march-madness-2010, bundle-scholars, visibility-hide

I appreciate that's slightly more typing, but it should give you what you need - all from the one field. Is it ugly? Perhaps, but it's functional - it works. And it works without any changes to Logos architecture.
>

That's five tags in one field. Not overloaded, I think, and a very good use of metadata. I will certainly look into incorporating the Logos folksonomy into my tagging. I will write a strategy for it and play around with it when I have the time, and see what happens.

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/182665#Comment_182665

I certainly haven't disputed that some works are contained in more than one collection, I just don't see why it would be considered a cataloguing decision with a negative impact. In what sense would they get unwieldy?

The thing is they'd have to tag that resource with all the collection names that it comes in, and you wouldn't be able to tell when looking at it in your library which one of those you bought it in.

Metadata is something that is static, it is not generated at resource install time. The metadata database is updated periodically and downloaded to everyone. So they can't put something in your metadata that is specific to you and how you bought a particular item in your library. When the metadata gets updated, it overwrites whatever was there before.

User editable fields in the metadata (including "My Tags") are different. They are stored separately and are not wiped out when the metadata database is updated. This goes for when you change the built-in title of a book too, for example.

Suppose Logos creates another field (say "Collection"), which would be static and would include all the collections that book is sold as part of. It would of necessity be updated whenever the collections on the Logos website are changed to add or remove books, so it would overwrite that info next time you got the latest metadata update. You wouldn't have a permanent record of what collection you bought the book as part of. I think the only way to keep that record permanently is to put it in a user-editable field, which is safe from being overwritten by new metadata updates. However Logos can't "pre-tag" resources in your user-editable fields because that would violate the principle of "safe from being overwritten" by the program. See the Catch-22? Furthermore, even if they broke that principle for this one exception, it might not fit the scheme of how you're using your tags field. I like using "Bought: 20100502" for example, whereas the example you gave above was "boughtdate_2010-05-02."

Maybe I don't understand the inner workings of metadata and tags as well as I think I do, so maybe something like what you're asking for would be possible. I'm certainly not suggesting it shouldn't be put forward to Logos to ask them to consider it. I'm just trying to prepare you for what I think their response might be. In any event, if you'd like them to take a look at this, it's probably better to post it in the Suggestions forum. This forum is more for "how do I do XYZ in Logos 4?" type questions, and it doesn't get read or responded to by the Logos employees much, in my experience. (Suggestions doesn't get responded to by them at all, but they claim they're reading it and collecting the ideas; however lately they've been preferring us to use UserVoice to make our feature requests known.)

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/182672#Comment_182672

The thing is they'd have to tag that resource with all the collection names that it comes in, and you wouldn't be able to tell when looking at it in your library which one of those you bought it in.

That reminds me of the L3 account information you mentioned previously. These days I just use my order history to keep track of collections I've purchased. Very useful. [:)] So it's not difficult to know which collection I bought it in. If the works were tagged according to their collection, I wouldn't even have to loook at the metadata, I would just have to create a rule which says 'collection:"Ancient Near East History Collection", or whatever the collection I bought was called.

Metadata is something that is static, it is not generated at resource install time. The metadata database is updated periodically and downloaded to everyone. So they can't put something in your metadata that is specific to you and how you bought a particular item in your library. When the metadata gets updated, it overwrites whatever was there before.

Yes, I understand this. I am not suggesting the metadata is generated at resource install time. I have talked about it being generated prior to publication ('cataloging in publication' is the industry term). The metadata I'm talking about isn't specific to me, it's specific to the resource.

Suppose Logos creates another field (say "Collection"), which would be static and would include all the collections that book is sold as part of. It would of necessity be updated whenever the collections on the Logos website are changed to add or remove books, so it would overwrite that info next time you got the latest metadata update.

Yep.

You wouldn't have a permanent record of what collection you bought the book as part of.

Whoa, why not? Why not just add the latest collection the book is in, to the existing metadata? For example, let's assume we have a collection called 'Ancient Near East History Collection'. Let's look at the putative 'collection' field of one of the books in this collection:

* collection_field=Ancient Near East History Collection

Now let's suppose later that work is included in another collection, called 'Early Iron Age History Collection'. The metadata in the 'collection' field is updated thus:

* collection_field=Ancient Near East History Collection; Early Iron Age History Collection

Just like we use tags in a field right now. So the resource metadata is updated, then what happens is Logos 4 downloads the updated metadata, and the original information is not lost it's just added to the resource. Maybe I didn't buy the Early Iron Age History Collection, but that's ok because the resource is still identified as being part of the Ancient Near East History Collection in which I originally bought it.

As I said, if we can do this ourseles manually using mytag, I see no reason why it can't be done prior to publication. I've enjoyed discussing this with you, and thanks for your thoughts and the recommendation to bring it to the attention of Logos (I'll investigate the suggestion forum, and User Voice).

I'm currently looking to see if I can get in touch with one or more of the information architects, as I intend to use Logos as the case study for my PhD thesis in industrial & information management. The information literacy of the Logos client base, and the use of metadata, will feature prominently. [8-|]

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/182688#Comment_182688

I'm currently looking to see if I can get in touch with one or more of the information architects, as I intend to use Logos as the case study for my PhD thesis in industrial & information management. The information literacy of the Logos client base, and the use of metadata, will feature prominently.

Cool! That would be a fascinating topic to explore, and Logos sounds like a great case study. Rick Brannan and Sean Boisen are the information architects I know. If you contact me by leaving a comment on my profile page and give me your email address (encoded for spam protection, though I'll delete the message as soon as I get it), I'll send you their email addresses.

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/182695#Comment_182695

Thanks Rosie, that's great of you. I used Logos as a case study for one of the papers in my Masters degree last year, as an example of information literacy 'best practice' in the industry. I'll head over to your profile now.

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/182665#Comment_182665

m not clear on what negative results you believe would ensue from tagging collections before publication. This is important to me if I'm going to tag all my collections in this way after publication. I'd like to know what might break, explode, or overflow if I keep doing this!

I know you were directing this question to the other Mark, but I think the both of us take the same view. The answer is nothing will break, etc. if you keep doing this. If it matters to you then tag away. Likewise, if there was an additional field, that Logos populated then all would be well (although I'd be a little grieved if they spend days and weeks adding data to that field across 10,000 resources at the expense of some of the other blatant metadata issues that exist).

But if Logos populated an existing field (series or tags), every Logos user would suddenly have hundreds of additional series/tag collections in the search dropdown and elsewhere in Logos. Loads of my dynamic collections would go awry as dozens of new books would be added to them probably erroneously. That wouldn't 'break' Logos, but you'd have lots of irate users for sure.

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/182688#Comment_182688

I'm currently looking to see if I can get in touch with one or more of the information architects, as I intend to use Logos as the case study for my PhD thesis in industrial & information management. The information literacy of the Logos client base, and the use of metadata, will feature prominently.

I'm not sure how you're using 'metadata' in this context. If you mean specifically information about books (Logos' equivalent of a MARC record), then I think the person to speak to might be Bob's mom.

On the other hand, if you mean information about words or concepts, then Rick or Sean are definitely good places to start. You might also want to listen to Sean's two talks at BibleTech 2009 and 2010 on LCV, which you'll find very interesting.

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/182703#Comment_182703

Mark, thanks for your response. Yes, an additional 'collection' field such as I suggested would solve this problem. No, I'm not suggesting that Logos back-catalogue existing resources, but that they take this approach to resources from now on.

Metadtata is simply 'information about information', or 'data about data'. There isn't a special kind of 'book metadata' and a separate kind of electronic medatata used by Logos. Metadata was invented by librarians and was used for decades before the electronic era. Most people used to be exposed to metadata first through their local library's card catalogue, and the Dewey Decimal system (one of the earliest systematized uses of metadata).

Today's electronic application of metadata is simply a natural outgrowth of everything which librarians built earlier. The electronic metadata of today is the latest development of a common librarian's tool. When I was studying as an undergraduate I took a Graduate Diploma in Library and Information Studies.

During that time my university (Monash, in Melbourne), was the first in Australia to realise that the information paradigm had changed. I was invited to transfer to the newly created Master of Information Management and Systems, and become an information professional. As an undergraduate I wrote a paper on the metadata which was used to catalogue the Qumran texts before the electronic era, and I learned Dublin Core, an early international metadata set initiative of the online era. I subsequently worked for several years as an IT librarian, managing the library's database and cataloguing library items, both of which turned out to be my areas of strength.

Bob's mom knows about metadata because she's a librarian like me. Librarians invented it. But it's the same stuff Rick and Sean use every day, it's all metadata. I would enjoy talking with Bob's mom about her contribution to the cataloging and indexing of Logos resources. However, I'm also fundamentally interested in the underlying information architecture of Logos, the metadata schema, and the granularity of the metadata.

I'm also interested in the information literacy of Logos clients, and steps taken by Logos to improve the information literacy of its client base. Bob's mom will have experience in that as well, since librarians have been teaching information literacy since your school librarian taught you how to use a library card catalogue and understand the first level of Dewey (000-999, did you ever have one of those big Dewey wheels you could turn to find out which subject was associated with which number range?).

But more than that, I'm interested in understanding if there's a formal information literacy approach being taken by Logos, the extent to which the information architecture is made transparent to the userbase, and the extent to which the information literate userbase is used to improve the information architecture, refine the metadata schema, and check the cataloging for errors.

Thanks for the links, I'll look into those.

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/182727#Comment_182727

Ok, Sean's talk on the LCV looks interesting already. During my Masters degree I had to write a controlled vocabulary and build matching thesaurus entries. I actually wrote mine specifically for cataloging Biblical resources, so I will be interested to hear what Sean has to say about the LCV.

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/182727#Comment_182727

But more than that, I'm interested in understanding if there's a formal information literacy approach being taken by Logos, the extent to which the information architecture is made transparent to the userbase, and the extent to which the information literate userbase is used to improve the information architecture, refine the metadata schema, and check the cataloging for errors.

I don't think Logos is doing much if anything in the way of formal information literacy education. I must confess that I don't think they do a very good job of user education in general, even on how to use the software. That's why we have to have this extensive user-created wiki. The wiki does explain how to filter the library and build collection rules based on the various metadata fields, and there are probably minor mentions of these fields in some of the official training videos. And users to notice (and get annoyed by) the inconsistencies in how publishers' and authors' names are spelled, missing series data, the publication date being wrong in many cases. (Logos often puts the date it was published electronically by them in that field, not the original print-based publication date, for example most of the Calvin 500 collection is listed as having been published in 2009 or 2010. Um...not!)

Some of us have long been begging Logos to allow information literate users to help improve the metadata. We run into errors in it all the time, and our only recourse now is to post our findings on http://wiki.logos.com/Metadata_correction_proposals and wait until Logos gets around to fixing them, which seems to take forever, though they did recently do a significant update of this list (moving some of the entries down into the "Corrections addressed by Logos" section). Our motivation to spend much time proofing the catalogue for errors is pretty low when we see how long it takes for some of our suggestions to be acted on.

If there's any way you could lend your knowledge to the people behind the scenes to encourage them and coach them in setting up some system that would help improve the metadata faster, that would be phenomenal.

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/182727#Comment_182727

I'm also interested in the information literacy of Logos clients, and steps taken by Logos to improve the information literacy of its client base. Bob's mom will have experience in that as well, since librarians have been teaching information literacy since your school librarian taught you how to use a library card catalogue and understand the first level of Dewey (000-999, did you ever have one of those big Dewey wheels you could turn to find out which subject was associated with which number range?).

But more than that, I'm interested in understanding if there's a formal information literacy approach being taken by Logos, the extent to which the information architecture is made transparent to the userbase, and the extent to which the information literate userbase is used to improve the information architecture, refine the metadata schema, and check the cataloging for errors.

While there's very few of us trained in these things, you might be surprised by the passion of some Logos users about metadata (one example http://community.logos.com/forums/t/17126.aspx). Search these forums for posts about 'topics', LCV or metadata to find them (use Google, not the forum search). Or look at the posts from Sean Boisen and Louis St. Hilaire.

Graham Owen

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/182672#Comment_182672

The thing is they'd have to tag that resource with all the collection names that it comes in, and you wouldn't be able to tell when looking at it in your library which one of those you bought it in.

What if Logos created a tag contained their internal numeric product codes. I realise that some resources would have multiple values in the tag because they are part of many products but it would be give us an easy way to cross reference items and also we could check the tag for purchases we are considering to see which items we already own. They would need to be padded with leading zeroes to avoid errors but an approach like this would answer a lot of the queries that we see by building on data that already exists.

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/182766#Comment_182766

What if Logos created a tag contained their internal numeric product codes. I realise that some resources would have multiple values in the tag because they are part of many products but it would be give us an easy way to cross reference items and also we could check the tag for purchases we are considering to see which items we already own.

Actually, the newly redesigned logos.com they are at work on is going to obviate the need for cross-checking purchases we're considering to see if we already own them. The website will tell us that info as long (as we're logged in to our account) because it will have access to all our purchase history. So I'm pretty sure it won't even be possible to buy something again which you already won. Yeehaw!! I've done that several times.

Graham Owen

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/182767#Comment_182767

Actually, the newly redesigned logos.com they are at work on is going to obviate the need for cross-checking purchases we're considering to see if we already own them. The website will tell us that info as long (as we're logged in to our account) because it will have access to all our purchase history. So I'm pretty sure it won't even be possible to buy something again which you already won. Yeehaw!! I've done that several times.

This seems to imply that they same information could be available within Logos 4 as long as we are on line so product collections could be dynamically available as collections. This type of integration demonstrates the benefits of being attached to the cloud!