Suggestions for naming and organising multiple collections?

Hi, I'm about to start renaming my collections and putting each book either dynamically or statically into one or more collections. However, when I did this for v3, I soon found that my limited list of collections was not refined enough, with far too many books in most collections. For many books, this removed the benefit or organising them, as I had to search through many books in a large collection. I'd like to put multiple sub-collections into larger collections, and be able to search the larger collection at times, as well as a smaller sub-collection on their own at times too. That is, I'd like to nest collections at one or possibly more levels. Does anyone have a list of collections, either for Logos or for other
book libraries, that would be useful for organising in Logos 4?

Suggestions much appreciated.

John Duffy

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MJ. Smith

I'd like to put multiple sub-collections into larger collections, and be able to search the larger collection at times, as well as a smaller sub-collection on their own at times too. That is, I'd like to nest collections at one or possibly more levels.

This can be done. I know that my library is too limited and specific to make its collections of use to others. But I, oo, would like to see the patterns set by the high-end users.

TCBlack

Well I haven't really got any suggestions for you beyond the categories that you might be interested in.

I still haven't set up all the collections I used to have in L3, but for my money I'll be defining collections such as:

Journals,

Archaeology,

History

Biography,

Illustrations

Technical commentaries (e.g. ICC, WBC)

Devotional Commentaries (not everyone likes this designation mind you)

Studies

Puritan

Dispensational

Calvinism

Arminianism

Dictionaries

John Duffy

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/33215#Comment_33215

Thanks for those suggestions - my current set of collections is more or less of the same order of detail. But I've been looking for something more detailed, for when the library grows, as it has already in some areas.

I've come across the Dewey classification system for religion http://www.oclc.org/dewey/resources/summaries/#200, which is more along the lines of what I was looking for. Here is a list that goes into some detail which is helpful http://www.mbbc.edu/page.aspx?m=1869#200 For myself, I would be happy with just a little bit more detail than the first link provides for some subjects.

However, the Library of Congress classification may be more appropriate, again with not all the detail that is available http://www.loc.gov/aba/cataloging/classification/lcco/lcco_b.pdf with the BV and BT being the most appropriate lists.

An interesting comparison of both is here http://www.narnia3.com/students/libraryclass.pdf

An example of Dewey with too much detail in general, but which may be of interest is here http://www.acu.edu/academics/library/cfm/clorgaids.html

Thinking about it, I personally prefer the Dewey system as it seems more logical and easier to navigate at first glance, and no-one I know of uses the LOC in this part of the world (Ireland). I could start with a basic catalogue, and if it appears that there are too many in one particular classification, I could add sub-classifications as required, and I would only need to sort out the relevant books without affecting the rest of the collections. Or, even begin with a little more detail for some subjects, such as 253.5 for Counselling. However, this would not cover everything, as I would need to have separate listings altogether for collections such as Journals and Best Commentaries. But a combination of Dewey and a few other collections seems a reasonable way to start.

Any thoughts?

P.S. Would it be too much to ask for Logos to add Dewey and(/or) LOC classifications to each digital book? It would be great in the long run, and could even allow for an alternative form of (automatic) library cataloging, with the user able to decide what level of detail to search under, by expanding the catalogue listing as desired, or set up favourite sections in the relevant listings. E.G. some would prefer commentaries divided into OT and NT, while other may prefer to list them by Bible book. Just thinking out loud...!

spitzerpl

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/33215#Comment_33215

I still haven't set up all the collections I used to have in L3, but for my money I'll be defining collections such as:

And I'm sure if my posts showed up in his library he would have another category for "heretics".

TCBlack

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/33455#Comment_33455

I still haven't set up all the collections I used to have in L3, but for my money I'll be defining collections such as:

And I'm sure if my posts showed up in his library he would have another category for "heretics".

That's "Irritants" Philip.

John,

For IMHO Dewey and LOC data would be great, but I'm in now hurry to start adding it.

spitzerpl

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/33461#Comment_33461

That's "Irritants" Philip.

What can I say? I do what I can.

One thing to consider about setting up Collections is that they are in the process of correcting a lot of the metadata. that means a lot of the manual weeding of dynamic collections to get unwanted things out will be unnecessary once the correct metadata is in place. personally I'm holding off setting up my collections until I see what the changes will look like.

TCBlack

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/33465#Comment_33465

Philip,

I'm holding off on lots of collection work for the same reason. Tagging however I'm looking to start pretty soon. I can't wait till the meta data downloads. But soon I'm going to have to spend time organizing my library or miss out on some good stuff.

Damian McGrath

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/33474#Comment_33474

I'm holding off on lots of collection work for the same reason. Tagging however I'm looking to start pretty soon. I can't wait till the meta data downloads. But soon I'm going to have to spend time organizing my library or miss out on some good stuff.

Me too on all counts.

I'm finding all sorts of things in my library and really need to get tagging. I can't wait til they allow us to do this in the resource information window.

spitzerpl

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/33493#Comment_33493

I'm finding all sorts of things in my library and really need to get tagging.

I can't wait till they get the tagging synced so i can bumm off everyone else's work.

TCBlack

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/33497#Comment_33497

I've only just started tagging books with what collections they belong to. Won't that make future comparisons easy?

spitzerpl

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/33499#Comment_33499

I've only just started tagging books with what collections they belong to. Won't that make future comparisons easy?

Yes. I tag everything with what I call a collection tag. Everything before my cross grade I tagged with "Old Resources" before the crossgrade materials were added. Then I filted out the Old, and tagged everything with Crossgrade. Then after my upgrade I filtered out Old and Cross, and marked them platinum...

If you wold like, I can tell you the rest of my very interesting story...

Damian McGrath

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/33508#Comment_33508

If you wold like, I can tell you the rest of my very interesting story...

Maybe tomorrow, that bedtime story has already had it's desired effect and is sending me to slee......

Dan Sheppard

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/33508#Comment_33508

Well, it sounds Philip, like you have used as a filter, Old and Cross.

Have you considered using "Rugged", as well?

Dan

TCBlack

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/33528#Comment_33528

Well, it sounds Philip, like you have used as a filter, Old and Cross.

Have you considered using "Rugged", as well?

LOL!

spitzerpl

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/33528#Comment_33528

Have you considered using "Rugged", as well?

I'll get to that, its in chapter 14, but since you want to hear about it....

chapter 1.2....

John Duffy

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/33465#Comment_33465

One thing to consider about setting up Collections is that they are in the process of correcting a lot of the metadata. that means a lot of the manual weeding of dynamic collections to get unwanted things out will be unnecessary once the correct metadata is in place. personally I'm holding off setting up my collections until I see what the changes will look like.

That sounds interesting - can you tell me more about that?

I missed out on repsonding last night as bedtime over here is several hours earlier than for everyone else who posted after me!!

spitzerpl

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/33803#Comment_33803

That sounds interesting - can you tell me more about that?

If you look at your library information in table view you will begin to see a lot of information that is incorrect. Greek Bibles are listed as English Bibles. Commentaries are mentioned as monographs, etc. If it try to set up a collection of english bibles with lang:en then it will pull in those Greek Bibles because they are marked wrong. I then have to drag those greek bibles to the minus column. I'm waiting for the greek bibles to be tagged correctly so when I set up my collection I only have to drag true exceptions to the minus columns, not items that shouldn't have been there to begin with.

Jon

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/33803#Comment_33803

You may have noticed that there are numerous errors in the metadata for various resources, ie all the information that is stored about a resource - type, title, author, publisher, date, series, language etc. This has caused some problems for people making collections since you make collections by filtering based on this data; eg you can create an English Bibles collection with type:bible lang:english, but it only works flawlessly if - every english bible is correctly assigned as type:bible and lang:english and no other resources are incorrectly assigned as such.

Fortunately, an ingenious but invisible change from L3 to L4 is that updated metadata can be downloaded without having to download the whole resources all over again, since L4 was released there has been a steady stream of silent metadata updates (you'll only catch them if you pay attention to what's happening 'behind the scenes' on your computer and monitor what processes are writing to the hard disk...), which means that collections are now starting to work like they were designed without manually "weeding" them...

spitzerpl

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/33811#Comment_33811

since L4 was released there has been a steady stream of silent metadata updates

I hadn't notice them. Thanks for letting me know!

John Duffy

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/33808#Comment_33808

Thanks Philip and Jon for explaining that.

So, the metadata is being corrected, but do you know if there any plans to use this to provide us with a way to organise our library? It would seem good to use Dewey or LOC, since after all the software is a 'digital library'. Reinventing the wheel is not one of my favourite activities, so if a library system was being developed already, I'd hate to spend the valuable time doing it myself, which would probably not be as good either. I know I'm going off on a wish list, but it would be great to see a tree-view rather than a flat view, where collections could be opened/closed, to allow easy drilling down to the relevant sub-collection. It's just that I'm lost with so many resources, and can't see the wood for the trees, so to speak, when looking for a resource other than a Bible, commentary, or dictionary.

John Duffy

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/33815#Comment_33815

So, the metadata is being corrected, but do you know if there any plans to use this to provide us with a way to organise our library? It would seem good to use Dewey or LOC, since after all the software is a 'digital library'.

Well, guess what? I've just found out that the Dewey and partial LOC systems are already used in the metadata. I've opened the library and added the 'Subjects' to the list of displayed columns. I then filtered and changed the order so that it is ascending. I was surprised to see that Dewey numbers appeared! Restricting it to just evangelistic books in the Find by typing "subject:269" filtered only the evangelistic books. There were two books, 'True Evangelism' and 'Mastering Outreach & Evangelism'. However, both showed up repeatedly under different subject titles, sometimes both under the same title, including 'Witness bearing', 'Handbooks', 'BV3790.R29 1990', '269.2', '269/.2' and so on.

This is just what I had in mind. Now all I need to do is to make dynamic rules to direct the Dewey numbers to the relevant collections I have made, which have the Dewey numbers in the titles.

Hold on, since writing the above, I've found out that the Dewey is not there for all resources. And some are mixed under the same number, e.g. Swanson's Dictionary on Aramaic is listed with the Cairo fragments. What a shame.

It just seems strange that such a high end program that is a digital library does not provide an out of the box means to sort through or categorise resources when doing searches or passage guides. It's no use putting subjects in the library for searching for a book, if those subjects cannot be used when doing search or PG. The user has to define their own collections for everyday searches and PG. I'm wasting soooo much time on this, on a program that sells itself as a time saver! It'll be worth it in the long run, but I'd be happier to know if I was duplicating effort in case Logos was going to improve the library management soon.

Am I ranting, or is it reasonable to look for an out of the box library management feature in Logos?

MJ. Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/41751#Comment_41751

Hold on, since writing the above, I've found out that the Dewey is not there for all resources. And some are mixed under the same number, e.g. Swanson's Dictionary on Aramaic is listed with the Cairo fragments. What a shame.

Give Logos a chance. They are still working on the correction of metadata - report the problems and let them fix it ... and if they don't (enter your own preferred carrot or stack)

Allen Browne

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/33499#Comment_33499

Do you think there's any chance Logos may add a metadata field for the Dewey number to applicable resources?

That would make it really easy to search, sort, and classify our resources, including one complete and useful way to create collections.

John Duffy

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/42015#Comment_42015

Give Logos a chance. They are still working on the correction of metadata - report the problems and let them fix it ... and if they don't (enter your own preferred carrot or stack)

MJ, I don't think that it is down to Logos, as the Dewey numbers are included in the publication calaloging data on some books and not others, and in quite a few cases it is not helpful (or accurate?), e.g. giving Greek Dictionaries the same Dewey number as general Bibles. I don't think that Logos would be free to change the publisher's number.

I do hope that the new metadata will allow some form of default cataloging that can be used in searches and passage guides, not just in the Library.

Overall, I find that the 'library' side of Logos is not as first class as the rest of the software features. It's OK for searching for a book to open on its own (although filtering within a catagory would be a helpful feature), or doing basic searches. But it doesn't integrate as well with passage guide yet. While I have created my own collections, based on the Dewey system (often putting books in different classifications than what the publishers did), I look forward to better integration between these and the PG. Logos 3 was better at this as the commentaries report had the option of being selected from a collection. I had a collection of the best commentaries (for me) and had these set as the default collection. I don't think that prioritisation is a suitable alternative, as those with no prioritisation will appear if there are few or even none prioritised for a particular Bible book. Personally, I'd prefer to see only a few books displayed that I prefer, rather than have a long list and not know where the prioritisation stops.