TIP of the day: Topic Guide Part 1 - Topic
1. The Topic section of the Topic Guide provides a list of the articles on Creation in your tagged Bible Dictionaries. The first entry is automatically expanded. Other entries cannot be expanded but are visible in mouse-over previews.
The dictionaries are listed in priority sequence with Logos default priorities taking over when your priority list is exhausted.
2. The dictionaries included are nearly the same as those included in the Factbook entry <Event Creation>. Note that all entries in the Factbook can be expanded.
3. At the bottom of the section, you are offered the ability to
- open Factbook to Creation (see above)
- open a Sermon Starter Guide to Creation
- Search for creation, cosmology, "origin of life"
Note the search includes the tag <Topic creation> with the remainder of the search being a simple text search.
4. Note, however, that the Topic tagging is sparse so that <Topic Creation> returns only a small number of results. However, these should all be relevant results not a casual mention of creation.
5. Compare the difference in range of a search based on the topic of creation vs. a search based on the preaching theme of creation.
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
Comments
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The dictionaries included are precisely the same as those included in the Factbook entry <Event Creation>.
Two of the dictionaries in the Topic Guide entry do not appear in the Factbook entry. They are the ubiquitous The New Bible Dictionary, Third Edition and New Dictionary of Biblical Theology. Please remind me why this is so.
"The Christian mind is the prerequisite of Christian thinking. And Christian thinking is the prerequisite of Christian action." - Harry Blamires, 1963
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Two of the dictionaries in the Topic Guide entry do not appear in the Factbook entry. They are the ubiquitous The New Bible Dictionary, Third Edition and New Dictionary of Biblical Theology. Please remind me why this is so.
Thanks for the correction. The Factbook is curated - Faithlife explicitly decides to include them. The Topic Guide is populated by a Search. As to why Faithlife made the decision they did, I do not know.
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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Factbook entry <Event Creation>
MJ. Did you open the Factbook entry by selecting the Factbook link in the example Topic Guide?
I am exploring this tip with my smaller library and when selecting the Factbook link from Topic Guide the Factbook entry populates by default with <Topic Creation>. I can't search events, my smaller library doesn't include Biblical Events Dataset by Elizabeth Licata.
"The Christian mind is the prerequisite of Christian thinking. And Christian thinking is the prerequisite of Christian action." - Harry Blamires, 1963
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Two of the dictionaries in the Topic Guide entry do not appear in the Factbook entry. They are the ubiquitous The New Bible Dictionary, Third Editionand New Dictionary of Biblical Theology.
The question was recently asked in another thread if there was any official piece of documentation where one can find which dictionaries are tagged to work with Factbook and which ones are not. The answer unfortunately was that there is not. As you notice that certain resources are not tagged for Factbook, you might create a collection containing those resources, and you might add that collection to a custom Topic Guide. I have tried doing that as a quick and dirty way to find dictionary articles Factbook missed without wading through a long list of duplicate articles common to both the Topic Guide and Factbook. Of course, if you do that you will need to remove items from the collection if/when you notice Faithlife adds Factbook tagging.
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As you notice that certain resources are not tagged for Factbook, you might create a collection containing those resources, and you might add that collection to a custom Topic Guide. I have tried doing that as a quick and dirty way to find dictionary articles Factbook missed without wading through a long list of duplicate articles common to both the Topic Guide and Factbook.
Good idea.[I]
"The Christian mind is the prerequisite of Christian thinking. And Christian thinking is the prerequisite of Christian action." - Harry Blamires, 1963
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MJ. Did you open the Factbook entry by selecting the Factbook link in the example Topic Guide?
Yes, I did. But the required datasets are in the flux of a merge process:
The Factbook has an entry for Creation (as shown in your screenshot). All the information about Creation, whether that be event data, topic data, theme data, etc. is included in that entry. That's the purpose of Factbook. You don't have to go to different tools depending on whether it's a place, person, event, topic or whatever, it's all merged together into one entry.
Generally speaking, if the label is identical across event/theme/topic/place/thing/person, then the merge will have occurred satisfactorily. If the label is not different, then it will require manual review, which seems to be taking a long time.
Preaching Themes are included in Factbook, but because their content is often merged with another topic (LCV Concept), they're not as visible. That's one of the purposes of Factbook: to bring together content of different types when it's "equivalent enough" that users will want it in a single place.
Here's how to tell: if there's a link to the Sermon Starter Guide in the See Also section, there's probably content from a Preaching Theme merged in.
In other cases, we haven't yet fully merged content where we should. But since there are only ~260 Preaching Themes, and some 20,000 Topics, I expect the Themes will all get merged in somewhere.
I personally am interested in how the various "related terms" will be affected as the merges occur.
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If I want to see the <Topic Creation> in Factbook I can't enter creation as the option will not appear in the dropdown menu. But if I enter <Topic Creation> I can get the record for topic to appear (on the left here).
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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Thanks MJ. for the thorough manner with which you illustrate and document things.[W]
"The Christian mind is the prerequisite of Christian thinking. And Christian thinking is the prerequisite of Christian action." - Harry Blamires, 1963
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