Thomas Merton works please!

Again, posting here for lack of a Catholic Products forum, and also because Merton is of much broader appeal than just to Catholics (there's a large selection of his books at the Regent College Bookstore, for example).

Merton has been requested before, but a long time ago, and I thought he needed to be bumped onto the radar screen again.

This list is by no means exhaustive, but it's a start (and sorry I didn't have the time to look up all the links on Amazon.com):

The Seven Storey Mountain
Contemplative Prayer
New Seeds of Contemplation
No Man Is an Island
Thoughts in Solitude
The New Man
The Wisdom of the Desert
Life and Holiness
Praying the Psalms
The Sign of Jonas
The Inner Experience: Notes on Contemplation
Spiritual Direction and Meditation
Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander
Choosing to Love the World: On Contemplation
Opening the Bible
A Book of Hours
Dialogues with Silence: Prayers & Drawings
Survival or Prophecy?: The Correspondence of Jean Leclercq and Thomas Merton
Thomas Merton: Essential Writings (Modern Spiritual Masters Series)
Thomas Merton: Selected Essays, edited by Patrick F. O'Connell
The Intimate Merton: His Life from His Journals
Lent and Easter Wisdom from Thomas Merton: Daily Scripture and Prayers Together with Thomas Merton's Own Words
The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton (New Directions Books)
A Year with Thomas Merton: Daily Meditations from His Journals

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fgh

How about trying the Vyrso forum? I'm not sure any of his works require Logos tagging.

Ben Amundgaard (Faithlife)

Again, posting here for lack of a Catholic Products forum, and also because Merton is of much broader appeal than just to Catholics (there's a large selection of his books at the Regent College Bookstore, for example).

Good suggestion, Rosie, I'll look into it. [:)]

Ben Amundgaard (Faithlife)

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/501340#Comment_501340

How about trying the Vyrso forum? I'm not sure any of his works require Logos tagging.

This brings up a really good question, one I don't think there is a definitive answer for. Namely, at what point do y'all want/need a book tagged? At one level this is a decision outside of my purvey. However, if I'm trying to decide going after a book for Vyrso and going after a book for Logos, it could be helpful to have a sense of what, in your mind, constitutes a book that needs tagging and one that does not?

Obviously this is a rather large question but I wouldn't mind hearing some thoughts on it.

Rosie Perera

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/501372#Comment_501372

How about trying the Vyrso forum? I'm not sure any of his works require Logos tagging.

I think Merton books would do fine in Vyrso. But I wasn't aware the Vyrso forum had such an active Product manager as Ben and the other new guys, and I really like getting the feedback from them that they think our suggestions are great and they're working on them! However now just going over and looking through some recent resource requests in Vyrso, I see that Brian Williams is actively replying. So maybe I'll change my strategy in the future.

at what point do y'all want/need a book tagged

Fiction, memoir, biographies, meditative books, and light Christian living titles usually do fine as Vyrso ebooks. The books that need to be tagged for Logos are ones that have lots of dates or references to external works that are likely to be in our Logos libraries. One or two passing references to Augustine (even quoting the familiar line "our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee") would be OK, but if an author is referencing Calvin or Aquinas left and right and giving the references in Institutes or Summa Theologica where those quotes came from, yeah, that one should be tagged.

Biographies are an interesting category. While they do tend to have lots of dates, those tend to all be self-contained, relating to the life of the individual the book is about, so they aren't dates a user is likely to need to look up in their Logos timeline. It's when you're reading about historical events and come across a date that you might like to know what else was going on around that time.

I think that the folks making this decision are doing a great job already and I wouldn't want to change a thing. There have been rare occasions where they decide to convert a Vyrso ebook to a Logos edition, and I've always welcomed those changes, but they were never things I was clamoring for. And as far as I know there are no Vyrso ebooks I have now that I wish were Logos editions.

There are probably a few Logos edition books that would have been just fine as Vyrso ebooks. So if there are ways to save time and be able to pump out more books a year, if it's not going to detract from the interoperability of our libraries, I'd be fine with that.

NB.Mick

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/501372#Comment_501372

This brings up a really good question, one I don't think there is a definitive answer for. Namely, at what point do y'all want/need a book tagged? At one level this is a decision outside of my purvey. However, if I'm trying to decide going after a book for Vyrso and going after a book for Logos, it could be helpful to have a sense of what, in your mind, constitutes a book that needs tagging and one that does not?

In addition to what Rosie posted, we need Logos-tagging for:

books that tend to explain bible passages like a commentary would do, even a very lightweight one.
The way automated tagging of bible references works now (i.e. creating wrong references) makes these a horror to read in Vyrso. So, in my library there are some eBooks that I wish were Logos editions, namely

"The message of the OT - Promises made",
"The message of the NT - Promises fulfilled",
"The Song of Solomon - an invitation to intimacy" and
"The finished work of Christ - The Truth in Rom 1-8"

books that really work only in another type than "monograph" - while this might even include the ones above, this is not really a big issue for type bible commentary - I'm rather thinking of Daily Devotionals, Lectionaries and Encyclopedia-like stuff. Of course one may still read them in Vyrso, but people have created PBs out of them to be able to switch the type to where it belongs.

Hope this helps,

Mick

fgh

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/501423#Comment_501423

Thanks for answering Ben's question for me. I saw it, but realized I didn't have the time for it.

Most of the time I would think it's pretty obvious. Anything needing headwords, milestones, links and the like should be in Logos, while if there aren't any tags you could possibly put in there, it should be in Vyrso (provided there are electronic files, I guess). And most books are either/or. Either they are scholarly and full of footnotes, or they're not, and lack them. Books with five or ten linkable footnotes are fairly rare.

The main problem would probably be books that should technically be in Logos, but which don't [yet] have the market for it. In which case Vyrso would be better than nothing.

Rosie Perera

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/501372#Comment_501372

This brings up a really good question, one I don't think there is a definitive answer for. Namely, at what point do y'all want/need a book tagged? At one level this is a decision outside of my purvey. However, if I'm trying to decide going after a book for Vyrso and going after a book for Logos, it could be helpful to have a sense of what, in your mind, constitutes a book that needs tagging and one that does not?

Just came across a Vyrso book I have that really ought to be a Logos edition so that it can be a Calendar Devotional:

Daily Light on the Daily Path: The Classic Devotional Book For Every Morning and Evening in the Very Words of Scripture

It is set up with entries for every day of the month. Would be nice to be able to use it that way.

Matthew C Jones

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/502533#Comment_502533

A cross reference to a previous post in a previous thread:

http://community.logos.com/forums/p/23080/172174.aspx#172174

It is well worth reading again. Thanks MJ.

Rosie Perera

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/502569#Comment_502569

A cross reference to a previous post in a previous thread:

http://community.logos.com/forums/p/23080/172174.aspx#172174

It is well worth reading again. Thanks MJ.

Oh my! Thanks for the chuckle and the walk down memory lane. I can't believe one of the quotes of mine that MJ was answering. I'd said "Logos format wouldn't be as much a benefit over print-based format to his works as it is for many other books." That was nearly three years ago. I sure have come a long way and now have adopted ebooks as my preferred way to read just about anything!

Rosie Perera

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/501372#Comment_501372

This brings up a really good question, one I don't think there is a definitive answer for. Namely, at what point do y'all want/need a book tagged? At one level this is a decision outside of my purvey. However, if I'm trying to decide going after a book for Vyrso and going after a book for Logos, it could be helpful to have a sense of what, in your mind, constitutes a book that needs tagging and one that does not?

Here's another criterion:

If other books in the same series by a publisher are Logos edition books, then the new book should also be prepared as a Logos edition book.

For example, I've got several books in Baker's Cultural Exegesis series:

Entertainment Theology: New-Edge Spirituality in a Digital Democracy
Everyday Theology: How to Read Cultural Texts and Interpret Trends
God in the Gallery: A Christian Embrace of Modern Art
Hip-Hop Redemption: Finding God in the Rhythm and the Rhyme
Reframing Theology and Film: New Focus for an Emerging Discipline
Reviewing Leadership: A Christian Evaluation of Current Approaches

Everyday Theology is a Logos edition. The others are Vyrso ebooks. The layout and fonts are different (the Vyrso ones look less crisp and professional, IMHO), so it makes the books look like they are not all part of the same series. I find this annoying, even though there's no particular reason from a tagging perspective that these need to be Logos books.

Logos look:

Rosie Perera

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/502770#Comment_502770

One more Vyrso book that should really be a Logos edition:

The Finished Work of Christ: The Truth of Romans 1-8 by Francis Schaeffer.

It should be type Bible Commentary so that it can be indexed by Scripture. The book description page even calls it a commentary. Vyrso is not a suitable platform for commentaries.

EDIT: Another one (sorry about these trickling in in dribs and drabs; perhaps you'd like to start a new thread for these, as it's really no longer relevant to Thomas Merton per se):

God’s Word in Human Words: An Evangelical Appropriation of Critical Biblical Scholarship by Kenton L. Sparks -- it is a scholarly work, and it's filled with tons of references to other works we have in Logos. It does not belong as a Vyrso edition. Better to have it there than not at all, but I'd hope it could be "Logosified" soon.

EDIT 2: Another one:

God’s Message for Each Day: Wisdom from the Word of God by Eugene Peterson -- it is designed to be a Calendar Devotional.

EDIT 3: Another one:

In the Beginning Was the Word: Language by Vern Poythress -- it is a scholarly work, and it has tons of references to other works we have in Logos.

EDIT 4:

This Day in Christian History -- should be set up as a Calendar Devotional

Also pretty much anything published by Baker Academic. Those tend to be scholarly works with references to lots of other books in our Logos libraries. The publisher field is just Baker, but if you look inside the books it is Baker Academic. The ones that are just regular Baker books can be Vyrso ebooks, though.

EDIT 5: Another one

A Guide to Reading the Entire Bible in One Year -- this guide goes through the Bible in canonical order; it should be indexed by Scripture so you can link it and scroll it alongside your Bible, for which it would need to be a Logos edition, not a Vyrso ebook.

Ben Amundgaard (Faithlife)

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/502789#Comment_502789

Rosie, et. al., just wanted to let you know I'm not ignoring all our helpful info here, I hope to look into it sometime today or tomorrow.

Ben Amundgaard (Faithlife)

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/504042#Comment_504042

As always, you guys are amazing! Thanks for all of these helpful thoughts. They will help me as I decide which books to go after for Logos and which, when possible, I could suggest to Vyrso.

As to Thomas Merton, I'm checking with Andrew and will let you know what I find out.