A long time ago in a series of Galaxie Journals far, far away...

Paul-C said:

I'd like to see a TJL Vol. 16 in Pre-Pub. How about it Logos?

[Y]  Please ....

I think the question this Christmas should be "would there be a sale soon for Theological Journal 1-15?" [<:o)]

Paul-C said:

I had an almost immediate response from Galaxie, which included the following statement:

No, Logos decided they didn't need me any more. They decided to go directly to the journal editors and try to get the content from each journal editor and create their own journal library. I know many of the editors don't like this and are not going to work directly with Logos, so some of the journals in my "Theological Journal Library" will be available in Logos in the future, and some will not.

Disappointing for those of us who value TJL so much...

Paul-C said:

I had an almost immediate response from Galaxie, which included the following statement:

No, Logos decided they didn't need me any more. They decided to go directly to the journal editors and try to get the content from each journal editor and create their own journal library. I know many of the editors don't like this and are not going to work directly with Logos, so some of the journals in my "Theological Journal Library" will be available in Logos in the future, and some will not.

Disappointing for those of us who value TJL so much...

This is a major disappointment - what were Logos thinking - I may now be using WS more often if this is the way I have to get access to this collection of journals.

This is awful news. I am dreadfully disappointed [:'(] WS here I come [U]

Kevin Maples said:

So will the theological journals already in Logos remain available?

No guarantee [:(]

The Grinch who stole Christmas has returned ?!? I thought he had reformed his ways.

Mark said:

Logos 5 is a great program.  But I have always felt the most valuable resource in the program were the theological journals produced by Galaxie.  It is a huge blow to see this end.  Why touch a good thing that worked well? 

I'm disappointed too [:(] ...certainly not the Christmas present I wanted.

I have sent emails to Bob and Galaxie.  Response from Galaxie was talk to Logos, they can't do anything.  Bob's responses have been vague and unhelpful.  I have not bought the previous version simply because it was on prepub for over six months.  IMO it seems this whole situation was a case of not following the "if its not broke, don't fix it" rule.  

I'm not particularly interested in these journals, but I've followed the threads over the years, and this one makes me rather surprised.

My memory is that you spent years complaining about Galaxie's poor quality, but now it's suddenly "why break something that was working?" and "it seems this whole situation was a case of not following the "if its not broke, don't fix it" rule."??

My understanding is that when Galaxie produced these on their own, they shipped early, but full of errors. Logos then got to face all the complaints, and the expectations that they would fix the files without compensation. Naturally, they weren't all that happy about that. Logos then decided to take the quality control into their own hands, hoping that would solve the problem. However, Galaxie still sent them bad source files, forcing them to choose between sending the files back to Galaxie for correction (meaning long delays and many complaints), or doing the corrections themselves (meaning extra costs without compensation). So, since that didn't work either, I guess they have now decided that the only way they can produce these journals with an acceptable quality, in an acceptable time, and at an acceptable cost, is to bypass Galaxie and do the whole work themselves. (Though, naturally, at first this will mean a delay, since all the contracts have to be renegotiated.)

I can't swear to this description, of course, but it fits what I remember of what I've read, including what Logos has said in the past (like this post by Kent).

You all know I'm critical enough of Logos at times, but this time I suspect you're blaming the wrong party. The fact that Galaxie says it's Logos' fault isn't proof that it is Logos' fault. We know Galaxie hasn't been able to produce good quality files in the past. The forums have plenty of complaints about it. We don't know anything that Logos has done wrong in this matter. Why, then, would it all now suddenly be Logos fault? I think they're working to ensure you finally get what you want, not to take it away from you.

Mark said:

MJ. Smith said:

When L4 was released Logos made clear their intent to not use 3rd party content but to pull it all in-house.

The theological journals were without doubt the reason for my signing into logos in the first place.  And if the only way to get them in the future would be to go to a different program, then for me it is certainly worth the value to do so, even if it means switching between logos and the new program.

Lets hope Logos reconsiders and realizes it is good business to work again with Galaxie..

Agreed!

Thanks Bob for the explanation of why we do not see the journals coming to Logos. 

But to others, if you needed a book and Logos did not have it you would purchase it elsewhere. I would love to see some of you explaining to your prof's or church, "Well I was gonna do that paper or preach that sermon, but it wasn't available in Logos."

WS has started carrying the journals, it is basically the same product Logos has, so until it changes and I need the journals, i'll buy them there. It simple supply and demand, just the consumer exercising their purchasing power.

I will look at what Logos offers as they get individual series of journals- if I believe they are what I need they may have a customer, if not I’ll treat the journals like I do any other product, 

I have dealt with Logos and Galaxie (Bible.org as well) for years, have respect for both. Hampton Keathly serves the Christian world in numerous ways, he is faithful, the same can be said for Bob and Logos.

So let’s chill out, let people state their disappointment, allow for a response, then let’s hopefully hear some coming solutions. Heck I’m still waiting for a dynamic sentence diagramming and notes function, it’s been almost 20 yrs [:D]

Michael Paul - WS are the initials of a competitor of Logos. I've never used it, but IIRC someone once said its a glorified Kindle app - IE lets you read, and not much else. Certainly not the tagging and so forth that Logos provides.

Its unfortunate the relationships with the content providers weren't in place prior to the dissolution of Logos relationship with galaxie. Perhaps this was unexpected on both sides.

Further I don't understand how Galaxie can be responsible for "dirty" files. The content for any article I've ever written was delivered to the journal digitally. They then digitally assemble the disparate articles then disseminate the completed journal either digitally or in a more traditional format.

The only thing I can think of is that G was supposed to be tagging the titles and so forth. That may well be the root of the issue here. They may have been negotiating over whose responsibility it is to do the tagging: If its been galaxies responsibility, and Logos feels they have to start taking care of that part, then its reasonable for them to ask for lower prices since at that point G is providing raw content, not a finished product.

If I had to speculate Logos business represented a significant chunk of Galaxies business model up to this point. With a million(?) or so logos users, it may have rivaled, or exceeded the income they had from the disparate bible schools and seminaries that pay monthly for access to the untagged content.

None of us actually knows what Logos is planning on the Journals front.  Although these collections of journals are useful, I'd much rather have something like  a search of the ATLA database built into Logos itself, which would give me access to up-to-date copies of the journals built into the product available on subscription. Whether Logos has something like that in mind I don't know, and I have no special information, but I do suggest we hold fire on criticising the company before we actually know what they are planning - we might even get a pleasant surprise! 

Bob Pritchett said:

GregW said:

None of us actually knows what Logos is planning on the Journals front.

Journals are very important to us, and we're working to get more of them into the system. Over the years we've been enhancing our special support for journals (adding the ability to correctly cite a specific article within a volume, for example, at copy and paste -- if the article is correctly tagged with our latest metadata standards, adding the biblio data type, which lets us tag bibliographic entries long before the destination is available, and which will work once it is, etc.). 

This is great to hear ... both the importance of journals and the tagging of entries before the destination is available. I have long been advocating the need for this on these forums ... Logos really is a listening responsive company/product. I look back over various suggestions I have made over the years, and many many of them are now realities (like having philosophical resources available).

Bob Pritchett said:

I would love to offer access to ATLA's ATLAS content; much of that was licensed exclusively to ATLA, and at the moment appears to only be available through institutional licenses to libraries, etc. I hope we'll either be able to hook into that -- connecting you directly through your institution's license -- or to convince them to offer access direct-to-consumer through Logos.

This is very exciting. I would love to own permanently the journal contents ... but an ongoing subscription via Logos would be fine. My PhD is slowly winding on, and I can see the day when I won't any longer have access through my university library on-line subscriptions, so continuing it through Logos would be a good long term solution for my ongoing academic needs. (I also use the ATHENS subscription journal library - not sure if or how this differs from ATLA, and if they might be more amenable to working with Logos.

I would buy all of my text books in Logos if I could. But I can't. Most semesters I'm happy with 2-3 of 10-12. Sometimes I could have bought more, but they were available as part of a cost prohibitive set; my greek texts for instance - half of the ones I need for first and second semester greek are available but bundled with hebrew titles that we wont be using using. This puts me in the position of choosing between spending 300$ on the books in print, or 270$ for the books in an alternative (dumb) format, or nearly 800$ in Logos - and then still have to spend an additional 100$ on books in print or e-books from an alternate source. 

The ATLA thing would be amazing though...

For your other product lines(noet), something similar with EBSCO might be a good idea as well...

Danny Parker said:

I am hesitate to reply in these threads that can become very unkind and unuseful.

Me too.  Good point worth emphasizing.  Let's consider thinking about this in another way.

Danny Parker said:

Obviously, one of my concerns is LOGOS' tendency (obviously this is merely my perception) to increase long-term costs and complexity, putting more financial pressure on their business relationships and the ability to provide low cost products.

I'm not sure there is a goal to increase costs or complexity.  I think costs go up when volume (sales) goes up.  More customers -> business grows.  Maybe there is a discussion to be had regarding the ratio of customers to employees, but that is a productivity issue.  There can be in-flight adjustments made there to the attentive owner.

Danny Parker said:

There also seems to be a tendency to emphasize volume of books for quality of books. This also assumes (perhaps incorrectly) that limited resources are applied to the public domain resources rather than the more current resources.

Older resources are a treasure.  It's copyright law and intellectual property rights that causes us to look at, and work with published material differently based on age.  This is an important point when thinking about some other downstream conclusions.

Danny Parker said:

If LOGOS could gain a reputation of becoming one of the first electronic publishers of current, in-demand books this would be a major marketing advantage. Is the current delay financial, complexity of development, resource availability?

All publishers are working aggressively to stay in business and make a profit.  The landscape has changed dramatically in the last 10 years.  Some are better than other ... more nimble, clearer vision, more financial resources, etc.  Logos has developed relationships with some of the largest, most influential publishers anywhere.  And Logos is providing many current resources.  I'm not sure that you can compare volume of resources in the public domain against current publications in a way that correlates to competitiveness, sustainability, and long term growth.  You may be able to compare another aspect, but I'm not sure that volume is one of them.  I would need to think about that more but I think it may be conflating several things to think this is a problem.

Danny Parker said:

Sometimes choosing to cut profit margins or even endure a loss on a particular item, can be vital to overcome competition (think large box stores that send out ads to lure people in or Amazon electronic book pricing at times).

I always have to remind myself that Amazon does not really publish anything.  They provide a service as a front door to many publishers.  Yes, they sell an e-reader.  But that is not where the money is made.  They provide easy access (worldwide) to vast quantities of books in both hardcopy and electronic format.  They own the copyright to very little of what they sell.

Logos provides value in that space and, more importantly, as a "system".  Their eco-system is a library system that is extremely powerful, and sophisticated, and getting better every release.