Search Journals by Topic

I am trying to search through a journal, specifically the Journal of Biblical Counseling. I have the journal in a collection, and the search fields include; Author, Description, Footnote Text, Heading Text, Large Text, Surface Text, Tag, and Title.

The difficulty that I am having is that those search fields are inadequate. I am looking for the ability to search by "topic" or "theme." Is there any way to accomplish this? For example, if I wanted to look up the topic, "bitterness," it is challenging to get articles that specifically deal with this topic. Searching by "All Text" yields too many resources while searching by the title of the article might not yield all the possible articles available.

If this is not possible, the second best thing would be the ability to tag an individual article myself (as opposed to the entire book/journal). As I read the different articles I could tag them by topic for future reference.

Thanks in advance.

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Comments

Justin Gatlin

Does the Journal Section of the Topic Guide do what you want? You can create a custom guide, select "Template type: topic" on the top right and then select "Journals" on the left side. Then it will just look up relevant journal articles.

marino389@gmail.com

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/793438#Comment_793438

Unfortunately it does not. See screenshot...

Kent

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/793442#Comment_793442

I find most topics by using the Large text or Title search feature which you already know. If it is not one of those than its probably not the topic of the article.

Graham Criddle

The difficulty that I am having is that those search fields are inadequate. I am looking for the ability to search by "topic" or "theme." Is there any way to accomplish this? For example, if I wanted to look up the topic, "bitterness," it is challenging to get articles that specifically deal with this topic. Searching by "All Text" yields too many resources while searching by the title of the article might not yield all the possible articles available.

Searching for "bitterness" against "heading text" gives three results

So this shows there are three articles with this word in the heading.

Anything else would be in the text of the article.

Are you looking for a different level of granularity?

If this is not possible, the second best thing would be the ability to tag an individual article myself (as opposed to the entire book/journal). As I read the different articles I could tag them by topic for future reference.

This could be done using Notes - and you may want to look at the Labels capability introduced in Logos 6. Looks ideal for this type of thing. Details at https://community.logos.com/forums/t/92624.aspx

Graham Criddle

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/793442#Comment_793442

Unfortunately it does not. See screenshot..

My guess is you don't have journals tagged with that topic

This won't work, however, for "Bitter", as while it is a defined topic "Bitterness" isn't and I don't see any journal results for that.

marino389@gmail.com

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/793538#Comment_793538

Thanks Graham,

I had not thought about using the "Label" feature. I think that is going to be the best option for me.

And yes, to answer your earlier question, I am looking for something different than "Heading Text." To continue using the "bitterness" example, there are multiple articles in the JBC that discuss this topic, but don't have the word "bitterness" in the "Heading Text." For example, there is an article titled "Pursuing and Granting Forgiveness" by Timothy S. Lane. Forgiveness is very applicable for someone going through bitterness, and in fact the word "bitterness" is found in the article, however I would have to search through "All Text" in order to find this article. If I search "All Text" I get 418 results - a lot of material to wade through.

I am almost certain that the JBC has already cataloged every article by topic. I recall using this feature in their own, "in house" electronic edition of the archives (while in college). I thought that perhaps Logos translated those tags into their system. Would be neat if Logos did this so that these topics pulled into the "Topic Guide."

Thanks for the help!

In Christ,

John

Dave Hooton

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/793573#Comment_793573

As a topic "bitterness" is associated with "jealousy", "resentment" and "forgiveness" is associated with "pardon", "remission".

So, finding an article that connects "bitterness" and "forgiveness" would not necessarily come under either topic.

If searching "All Text" you could use:

bitterness AND forgiveness

But a more fruitful search would be:

bitterness AFTER heading:forgiveness

The problem is knowing that heading: can be used for the search field "Heading text" and that largetext: can be used for words in "Large text".

You can look under both search fields:

bitterness AFTER (largetext:forgiveness, heading:forgiveness) ---> the comma separated list is needed, rather than OR

I also used "Match all word forms" from the Search menu to get forms of "forgiveness" like "forgiving" and "bitter" as well as "bitterness".