TIP of the day: what you can't do ... so far as I can tell and a work-around ... as well as some tri

1. Some of the early famous Christian individuals are known under a number of different names depending on faith tradition, regional differences, spelling standardization dates ... So I start out with the Factbook entry for Saint Clotilde which basically shows her with or without the title "Saint".

2. So I click on the Search for Clotilde at the bottom of the Factbook entry. I get 86 entries from my library. I scan them looking for additional spellings knowing that the Saints resources is often a solid resource for this purpose.

...

3. Clicking on the actual entry for the Saints entry I get:

4. I add the additional spelling to my search argument. I now get 475 results in my library and again scanning through them find an additional spelling.

5.Of course, I want to save my work so that next time I can start with the broader range of spellings. So I go to add a note to my "Factbook Notes" file which contains additions, corrections, expansions etc. for the Factbook. I add a note directly in the note file itself. The body of the note is the alternative spelling. I then open the edit attachment points function of the Note.

6. At this point I find that Clotilde exists only as a topic, not as a person, and one cannot attach a note to a topic. So I attach the note to the entry in the Saints file knowing that is my "go to" resource for saints so I will find it again.

7. So I switch to another example that I know exists as a person - Noah's wife. Again creating a note, filling it with some of the traditional names applied to this unnamed Biblical character, starting again with adding the note directly to the file, then editing the attachment point to the Biblical person entry.

8. Now you will find that the Factbook has no refresh capability. You must change to another entry then come back to the entry you wished to see in a refreshed mode - including Community Tags when you are adding them. But that's okay 'cause the entry won't show that you've attached a note to it anyway. But when it does, I'm already prepared and in the meantime, I know where I put the not information and how to find it.

9. And all is not lost, there is a place you can actually see your note displayed ... do a search on <Person Wife of Noah>.

This is actually a big step forward - you can put notes on many of the Factbook items and find them in a search. And until Logos provides a Community Tag-like ability to add alternative spellings or makes a major push in the alternative spelling/terminology arena, we can be glad that we have a work-around that's data should be preserved across most solutions Logos is apt to develop.

Note: you may also use Community Tags to standardize the spellings rather than relying on a complex search argument.

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Comments

James Taylor

Very clever MJ, thanks for the tip

Eli Evans (Logos)

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/772729#Comment_772729

MJ, thanks for all your work on this and other Tips of the Day.

I glean the following possible improvements we could make:

1) Certain (probably many) Factbook entries need more alternate names taking a broader range of church traditions;

2) Certain persons who are only topics now should be promoted to person (not biblical person, but we do have a “notable people” biographical database);

3) Taking notes on a Factbook reference should show the note in the Factbook somehow;

4) One should be allowed to attach a note to a topic;

5) Users should be allowed to edit Factbook entries via some mechanism like Community Notes.

I’ve sent #1 and #2 off to the editorial group for investigation, with reference to this thread. #3 and #4 are on the list for consideration for a future version, though I don’t know which. #5 is not planned as far as I know.

SineNomine

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/773067#Comment_773067

2) Certain persons who are only topics now should be promoted to person (not biblical person, but we do have a “notable people” biographical database);

I am wondering what the logic is behind classifying a person as a topic instead of a person. Would you be able to explain?

Eli Evans (Logos)

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/773089#Comment_773089

I am wondering what the logic is behind classifying a person as a topic instead of a person. Would you be able to explain?

There are two types of persons we catalog at the moment: biblical persons, and other persons of note. The list of biblical persons is finite, and the list of notable persons is open-ended and expanding all the time. The source that feeds the biblical persons list is obviously the Bible. The source that feeds the notable persons list is various -- authors of books we publish, dictionary headwords, and so on.

Topics, on the other hand, come from the headwords of dictionaries we publish. Topic records are pretty lightweight. They consist mainly of various ways of expressing the topic as a headword, and links back to the dictionaries it came from. We have a good number of persons in the system who are listed as entries in some dictionary, who are not yet notable enough -- or just as likely, have not yet been processed by the curation team -- to get into the more heavyweight "biographical entry" treatment, which has birth/death dates, bio blurb written, and a few other things.

We do sometimes label topics as being people or places. That's why you'll sometimes see "So and So (Person)" or "Such and Such (Place)" as the format for a topic name. But that is just a naming convention; it has no effect on the underlying typology.

Eli Evans (Logos)

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/773097#Comment_773097

I guess that's just a description of the process and not the logic behind it. [:)] Essentially, it's pragmatic rather than philosophical. That is, it's about managing editorial resources. It's not that a person's name is seen and then sorted as a topic record or a person record; it's that they all start as unsorted topics.

Erwin Stull, Sr.

This is a test reply. Please ignore it. I am checking to see if I have the same issue as a forum user has posted here https://community.logos.com/forums/t/117765.aspx .

1. Some of the early famous Christian individuals are known under a number of different names depending on faith tradition, regional differences, spelling standardization dates ... So I start out with the Factbook entry for Saint Clotilde which basically shows her with or without the title "Saint".

2. So I click on the Search for Clotilde at the bottom of the Factbook entry. I get 86 entries from my library. I scan them looking for additional spellings knowing that the Saints resources is often a solid resource for this purpose.

...

3. Clicking on the actual entry for the Saints entry I get:

4. I add the additional spelling to my search argument. I now get 475 results in my library and again scanning through them find an additional spelling.

5.Of course, I want to save my work so that next time I can start with the broader range of spellings. So I go to add a note to my "Factbook Notes" file which contains additions, corrections, expansions etc. for the Factbook. I add a note directly in the note file itself. The body of the note is the alternative spelling. I then open the edit attachment points function of the Note.

6. At this point I find that Clotilde exists only as a topic, not as a person, and one cannot attach a note to a topic. So I attach the note to the entry in the Saints file knowing that is my "go to" resource for saints so I will find it again.

7. So I switch to another example that I know exists as a person - Noah's wife. Again creating a note, filling it with some of the traditional names applied to this unnamed Biblical character, starting again with adding the note directly to the file, then editing the attachment point to the Biblical person entry.

8. Now you will find that the Factbook has no refresh capability. You must change to another entry then come back to the entry you wished to see in a refreshed mode - including Community Tags when you are adding them. But that's okay 'cause the entry won't show that you've attached a note to it anyway. But when it does, I'm already prepared and in the meantime, I know where I put the not information and how to find it.

9. And all is not lost, there is a place you can actually see your note displayed ... do a search on <Person Wife of Noah>.

This is actually a big step forward - you can put notes on many of the Factbook items and find them in a search. And until Logos provides a Community Tag-like ability to add alternative spellings or makes a major push in the alternative spelling/terminology arena, we can be glad that we have a work-around that's data should be preserved across most solutions Logos is apt to develop.

Note: you may also use Community Tags to standardize the spellings rather than relying on a complex search argument.