LOGOS: Your recent response to Metadata Tagging Proposals
I just noticed a recent response at http://wiki.logos.com/Metadata_correction_proposals
Response 1
- All Lexicons should have appropriate ancient
language as well as lang:English- The language of a book is the primary language it is written in
rather than the language it is about, so a Hebrew lexicon written in
English is English, not Hebrew. A Greek grammar written in Spanish is
Spanish, not Greek, etc.
- The language of a book is the primary language it is written in
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?).
Response 2
- Bible commentaries vs Bible notes: Resources that
comment on every verse of the Bible should be tagged as commentaries,
those that comment briefly on some verses only, or which title
themselves “Study Bible” should be tagged bible-notes.- Logos’ use of these types is primarily functional rather than
descriptive. The Commentary type is used for many different kinds of
resources that are indexed by Bible verse and that the user may want to
appear in the Passage Guide. Bible Notes are used for the Notes from a
Bible, as, for instance, most of our “Study Bible” resources. Further
breakdown of the Commentary category would be somewhat arbitrary, so
it’s better left to user discretion via tags.
- Logos’ use of these types is primarily functional rather than
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?
Background
This wiki article has been used to document
requests for changes to Logos' resource metadata and for Logos to
respond to these proposals. It has been fairly successful but changes
have been slow.
Usage
The primary reason to change
metadata is to create efficient dynamic collections with criteria like type:bible
lang:English rating:>1 but also to ensure Logos4's internal
categorisations are correct for prioritisation and guides.
Dave
===
Windows 11 & Android 13
Dave is absolutely right - this is an inadequate response for the following reasons:
Please, Logos, reconsider.
This is my personal Faithlife account. On 1 March 2022, I started working for Faithlife, and have a new 'official' user account. Posts on this account shouldn't be taken as official Faithlife views!
As a further follow up, Logos said this:
But the following are both tagged as "Ancient manuscript"!
I think these are rightly tagged in this way, but it's clear the tagging isn't consistent again.
P.S. I've invited Louis St. Hilaire to the discussion, as I think he's the person at Logos who's responsible for these decisions.
This is my personal Faithlife account. On 1 March 2022, I started working for Faithlife, and have a new 'official' user account. Posts on this account shouldn't be taken as official Faithlife views!
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.
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.
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.)
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.
Dear Louis St. HIlaire:
Thanks so much for your response to Dave and Mark.
My only "quibble" might be with the following statement.
Many of us (especially those involved in PBB creations, continue to) check out the Libronix 3 ["about this resouce" - "learn more about this resource" etc] in order to see what has or has not been tagged.
Thank you for the further promised and anticipated work to be done in this area.
Regards, SteveF
Louis Hilair, I'm afraid you haven't made a good impression for metadata accuracy when you misquote my name![:^)]
Please submit this strategy to users for comment rather than present a fait accompli. We are, and have been for many years, very passionate about library metadata.
As we understand how resources of both these types can now be user-selected for use in Passage Guide may I suggest that all "Study Bibles" titles be classed as type:Bible Notes provided that they are indexed by Bible ('The So that's Why! Bible' is an outright anomaly). This will populate Bible Notes whilst being slightly more objective about books that are classed as a Commentary.
Dave
===
Windows 11 & Android 13
And misquoting Louis' name is your revenge? tsk... tsk... other cheek (or was it 'be cheeky')?[;)]
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
As long as nobody thought I was really upset ....
Dave
===
Windows 11 & Android 13
I support getting Metadata right.
Currently, the Metadata fields are "overloaded": (1) They are used internally by Logos processes and software to trigger how they work, and where they can appear. (2) The customers (thats us) are using the fields for Collections and searching. At present those needs don't match up too well.
Can I suggest it would be great if Logos4 allowed 10 new user-fields, in addition to the current "MyTags", which we currently "massively overload" in an attempt to work-around the current faults in the Metadata fields.
If we had new fields: User0, User1, User2, User3 ... User9 for all our resources; we could use some of these NOW to make our own corrections and use them in place of the default metadata fields that are problems.
Such user fields could be ignored by most users that have little or no interest in them, but could provide important work-arounds and new options for those where its a big deal. Some of us have well over 1,000 resources and the current issues limit the value of adding new ones. (I too had a nightmare with 2 of my NIBC volumns missing from some of my collections and reports.)
Adding User0...User9 should NOT stop the work on getting the Metadata issues addressed, and working with users on a plan, but seems to me as something that could be added with little delay, and need break nothing in the processing, tagging and release of new resources.
Comments?
Jim,
Might I suggest the opposite. Have Logos fields 0-9 or what ever, that they need for program control. Then let the meta-data be true meta-data describing the resource in standard library science terminology. The visible meta-data should not be used for program control. This way if the visible meta-data needs to be changed for any reason it can change without having to coordinate with a program update.
The problem with just a string of user fields is that everyone will have to duplicate what should be standard. It means each Logos user will need to earn an MLS degree. [;)] And it will be hard to communicate with each other because we will all have defined our series, language, type, etc. in different ways.
It could easily become a nightmare if, when we teach an ordinary mortal person to use Logos, we have to teach them library science first so they can set up the meta-data, so they can set up their collections, so they can run a simple report so they can learn about Jesus.
Edify Ministries and Alaska Bible Seminary, Bethel, AK
I don't quite understand why you think this follows. Could you elaborate please.
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
I remember a comment or two from Logos that meta-data changes "can" require program updates. IMHO meta-data should be no more complicated to change then correcting a spelling error in a resource. In "a former life" as a computer business system designer, I would not allow a field to have multiple meanings. Every time I did allow it, I got in trouble, so I outlawed it. Meta-data for collection building is a different "meaning" (construct) than meta-data for program control. They should, IMHO, be independent variables (separate fields).
Edify Ministries and Alaska Bible Seminary, Bethel, AK
I agree with this. It's a standard procedure of normalization to identify any multiple values in single fields and split them into individual fields. This allows for far more powerful indexing, and if this change was made to Logos then collection rules could be even more flexible and intuitive.
Win 7 x64 | Core i7 3770K | 32GB RAM | GTX 750 Ti 2GB | Crucial m4 256GB SSD (system) | Crucial m4 256GB SSD (Logos) | WD Black 1.5 TB (storage) | WD Red 3 TB x 3 (storage) | HP w2408h 24" | First F301GD Live 30"
I would also love to be able to have multiple user-defined fields, not have to overload tags the way we do now. I use it to record what base package or bundle I purchased a resource in, what date I bought it, whether it was a pre-pub or a special sale, and then all the tags I want to use for making collections. It would be nice to be able to view my library sorted in chronological order by when I acquired each resource. That way I can continue focusing on familiarizing myself more with the more recently purchased books. Can't do that now the way tags currently work. Well, I can group by tag, and that is sort of what I want, but then I've got to expand each date to see what items I bought on that date. And there's all the other clutter and redundancy since there's a group for each tag I've used.
Rosie, I'm replying to this partly to bump the thread in order to revive interest in it. I would actually like to know who is interested in this suggestion. I don't expect it will appear necessary to the majority of users, but I would like to exchange ideas with those whom it does interest.
Win 7 x64 | Core i7 3770K | 32GB RAM | GTX 750 Ti 2GB | Crucial m4 256GB SSD (system) | Crucial m4 256GB SSD (Logos) | WD Black 1.5 TB (storage) | WD Red 3 TB x 3 (storage) | HP w2408h 24" | First F301GD Live 30"