Am I missing something on the topical searching?

I searched "Pharisees" in a collection of "Bible Dictionaries" to see what the results are sorted like and either I don't understand how to do a topic search; or there is one vital ingredient missing!

On a "topic" search we are looking for "the subject of the article" and not just an "incidental mention" while actually speaking about some other totally unrelated subject.

Is there a way to restrict the search to just "subjects of the articles"?

Notice that none of these hits are actually the subject at hand....Pharisees!

This is akin to looking in your owners manual for your car and having to look up the words "headlights" in several hundred places before you actually got to the part where "headlights" are the topic and then and only then can you figure out how to change one out!

I had to scroll down; way down to see if any of them were the subect of an article.

Could Logos do one of two things:

1.) Rank subjects #1 (considering a subject would carry the most weight in this type of search instead of "several incidental mentions" of a given word.

2.) Create a search operator like "Subject:Pharisees" and thereby filter the word only where it's found as the subject of an article.

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Comments

Bohuslav Wojnar

Robert, I think you are missing the Topic section on the top of the list, or I am mistaken in understanding how the thing should work. Here is my search of a collection:

Above the section "My Content" with 0 results and "Library Results" with the hits in the regular text, I have a "Topic" section with 0 results. I think this feature still not work in this Beta.

I think eventually it will sort the topic hits in that first section and only than regular hits. We need Logos explanation on that. But I wonder why you do not have that Topic section there?

Bohuslav Wojnar

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/9590#Comment_9590

I think eventually it will sort the topic hits in that first section and only than regular hits. We need Logos explanation on that. But I wonder why you do not have that Topic section there?

Now I see it works differently. I am not sure I got the purpose exactly. Search for the word revelation gave me the following result:

Robert Pavich

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/9594#Comment_9594

Bohuslav,

that's weird, I just clicked "ranked" and it looks just like yours with the topics arranged at the top.

I guess that I was using it wrong...thanks for the help.

bob

Damian McGrath

On a "topic" search we are looking for "the subject of the article" and not just an "incidental mention" while actually speaking about some other totally unrelated subject.

Robert,

You're not actually doing a "topic search" you are searching the resources in the collection titled "Bible Dictionaries" for occurrences of the word "Pharisee/s"

I note from your screen shots that you have ordered the results "By Book." So, your result list is showing each book, in alphabetical order, and each occurrence of the term in each book in page order. I don't think that this is unexpected.

To me, more surprising is when we search not "By Book" but "Ranked". There are obvious problems in these "rankings". Look at my rather long results snapshot below. The second entry is the actual entry from AYBD for Pharisees, it is preceded by an entry half way through that article and not long followed by two more entries from the very same article. While the Harper's and Nelson's New Illustrated Bible Dictionaries provide results keyed to the article entries, the Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, like AYBD, appears in 6th place with a sub-entry before appearing in 11th place with the actual article entry.

Bohuslav Wojnar

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/9599#Comment_9599

Have you found Damian, how to do actual topical search? Or the philosophy of searches does not allow that "classical" approach? I like really the ranked search, it reminds actually the Google search, which is good, but we need sometimes just a list of the topics, not the word itself. How do you that?

Damian McGrath

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/9608#Comment_9608

Bohuslav, I'm quite sure it ain't there from what I've read and what little I've understood.

Bob made mention of it here:

http://community.logos.com/forums/p/915/8105.aspx#8105

Though, honestly, I'm not quite sure what he was saying other than no more topic searches.

spitzerpl

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/9611#Comment_9611

Bohuslav, I'm quite sure it ain't there from what I've read and what little I've understood.

Bob made mention of it here:

http://community.logos.com/forums/p/915/8105.aspx#8105

Though, honestly, I'm not quite sure what he was saying other than no more topic searches.

Without topics I'm even happier that I made an excel file with all the headings from the theological journals. I'm hoping they do something like they did with the images. Let us search the Headings in the resources by doing a #heading search. This would be huge in my opinion because instead of finding a small section that mentions say a passage you could find a article heading that focuses its discussion on the topic.

Bohuslav Wojnar

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/9611#Comment_9611

Bohuslav, I'm quite sure it ain't there from what I've read and what little I've understood.

Bob made mention of it here:

http://community.logos.com/forums/p/915/8105.aspx#8105

Though, honestly, I'm not quite sure what he was saying other than no more topic searches.

Yes, I read the post and I think I am starting to see that new "out of the box" way of searching. I think it will be similar to Google searches. I would like that. They say also that some topics functionality is still not in place. We will see. I tell you guys, I am starting to love that new Logos... It is still baby though...