On "type:Monographs"

I am thankful to another Logos user (Mike) for his question on tagging etc and the responses about tagging and Prioritizing which led me to removing many Monographs from my Prioritized list today. Thanks Mark and others.

But this activity led me to some questions / concerns > maybe a suggestion too.

I realized today that the MONOGRAPHS in My Library are about half of my Resources. As I was removing them from my Prioritized List, it became clear to me that many of these resources are similar; these similarities reflect many different categories and that these categories could be very helpful to Logos users if they were so identified under TYPE. ("my Tags" is a good "work-around", but ... I don't think this completely satisfies my concerns.) So, here goes.

Question: Would it be useful to split the MONOGRAPH types into smaller categories - especially seeing how Logos' offerings have grown so exponentially over the past few years? Selah (in the sense of: 'think on this').

Concern: Is it a problem having some resources labeled Monograph - and being passed over in the Prioritization section > thereby continually leaving them out of the primary Search results?[Yes, our custom Collections DO pick these up and that is great.] Is this label a way of keeping certain Resources out of certain Search results deliberately? If so, what is the rationale? It is probably because of the internal structure of the books themselves, but sometimes the labels seem to lack consistency. I know Logos programmers / engineers do their best to make Logos better all the time. I am just asking if it might be a good time to re-evaluate this broad category and perhaps bring in some sub-categories that 'might' improve searches based on users having more options in the Prioritization section. There may be other benefits as well.

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Mark Barnes

Is it a problem having some resources labeled Monograph - and being passed over in the Prioritization section > thereby continually leaving them out of the primary Search results?

Prioritisation has no effect on searches (ie using the search tool). It only impacts on lookups (e.g. parallel resources and many guide sections).

s this label a way of keeping certain Resources out of certain Search results deliberately?

It's a catch-all for every resource that isn't a dictionary, commentary, cross-reference, etc. etc.

It is probably because of the internal structure of the books themselves

Correct.

I am just asking if it might be a good time to re-evaluate this broad category and perhaps bring in some sub-categories that 'might' improve searches based on users having more options in the Prioritization section.

Technically, the type of a resource doesn't affect whether or not it can be prioritised. What matters is what indexes it has. If it only has a page number index, or no index, then there's no point prioritising it. We say "don't prioritise monographs", as almost all monographs don't have these indexes. But making new sub-types wouldn't help with this problem.

That said, there would be some benefit in some new resource types. The most obvious would be a "sermons" type, for resources that show up in the sermon section of the Guides. But I don't think there are many others.

Ron Corbett

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/623323#Comment_623323

Excellent answers Mark. Having this "catch all" probably is a great feature on second thought.

I just want to dialog about this a bit more if you would indulge me. Maybe an example or two might help clarify my thinking on this. Under Monographs, I saw: Introductions, Bible Handbooks, Outline Books, Study helps, Interpretation tools, and books on History, Creeds, Dogma, etc. But, you are right: these should probably just be tagged and slipped into some Collections.

I like your idea about a 'Sermon' category under TYPE. I may be suggesting something that may not have much value to other users, I don't know. But I would suggest a category for Source Documents be helpful - one that reflects the religious Texts / Literature of early times such as: Dead Sea Scrolls (Vermes' translation is under Monographs), Pseudepigrapha (also under Monographs), [Nickelsburg's Jewish Literature Between the Bible and the Mishnah], The Talmud(s) and maybe Egyptian Literature, Amarna Texts, etc.

I know these can be tagged and I already have them in my Collections. It is just that when we do a search on a particular Scripture, there may be references to that Scripture in these texts. it might be nice to see a default category for this. Essential? No. Helpful? Perhaps.

Mark Barnes

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/623340#Comment_623340

I would suggest a category for Source Documents be helpfu

There is an Ancient Manuscript's type, but that only includes original language documents. Modern translations are in monographs, as you say. That does cause some confusion.

But subjects and collections are generally the way for Logos to achieve what you're describing. The type field is really an internal field that we happen to be able to see,. It's for the software's benefit, rather than ours. It's possible for Logos to create it's own collections, and add them to guides (it's done this in Verbum for Papal documents or Canon Law or something). But, at the moment, at least, we need to rely on our own tagging.

For what it's worth, let me tell you what I do (which takes very little time, even for a very large library).

I have a custom guide called Collections. That consists of several collection sections, each of a different collection. My collections are broad, but a bit random, as I only create them when I have a need for them (it's quicker that way). When I new a new category, I create the collection, and add it to the guide template. It gives me a quick way of looking for useful links.

If you have a large library, you'll probably find it useful to also have a second guide called Collections (Favourite). It's identical to the first, but it only includes resources I've rated four or five stars. I use this guide first, as it should have more high quality results. But I also use the general guide because doing so might alert me to other high-quality resources in my library that I'm not familiar with. If I find them, I rate them with a 4 or 5, and then they'll automatically go in my Collections (Favourite) guide.

Creating duplicate collections just with your favourite resources is easy, as the example below shows (note the plus and minus boxes).

The crucial part of the whole operation is not wasting time trying to work out what might be useful, but only doing a little bit of work when you know something is definitely going to be useful.

Ron Corbett

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/623368#Comment_623368

Thanks so much. This is great material. I'm sure this will be helpful to many others as well. [Y]

Donnie Hale

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/623368#Comment_623368

I have a custom guide called Collections. That consists of several collection sections, each of a different collection.

This is brilliant. I'd say that I'm not sure why I didn't think of it sooner, but I am sure why - I'm a moron. I do the equivalent, manually, with some regularity.

Have to give this a whirl tonight.

As always, thanks Mark!

Donnie

fgh

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/623368#Comment_623368

There is an Ancient Manuscript's type, but that only includes original language documents. Modern translations are in monographs, as you say. That does cause some confusion.

I've been thinking about suggesting an 'Ancient Manuscript in Translation' type.

Collections (Favourite)

These forums are corrupting me! My brain is beginning to think something looks 'odd' with the word 'Favourite'.[:'(]