Other theological dictionaries in searches?

EdwinKwok said:

On the same note, those dictionaries don't seem to have entries or heading as search fields, how do you access the information across them easily and efficiently?

As Mark has explained, at present they are not indexed by heading, so the best you can do for now is have a vague idea of which volume you want to look something up in, open it and then open its Table of Contents pane and navigate directly to the heading (if that topic exists in the dictionary) that way:

It's kind of no better than looking it up in the print-based resource (except that you can copy/paste from there, and there are a few hyperlinks in the text). I hope Logos makes these dictionaries more easily searchable; that's supposed to be one of the main points of having them in electronic format!

Sean Boisen said:

Just to sprinkle in a bit of hope:

• We hope to roll out heading-specific search in the near future. We know how to do it technically: the major issue at this point is that changing books and journals to support it will require a large download-and-reindex cycle, and we know people don't always like those But it's coming: it's just a matter of how soon.
• We have several additional dictionaries nearing readiness for inclusion in the Topics/Look it Up section, and we're staffing up to get the rest of the important ones completed this year.

Thanks for the update. Looking forward to it.

I would have thought the IVP Dictionaries which were just released would have been searchable. Are these slated for editing to allow inclusion in topical searches?

Is there a way of finding out which books are searchable before buying? If I would have known the IVP OT were not searchable I wouldnt have bought them.

For the benefit of those who haven't been following this discussion since November, LCV stands for (I think) Logos Controlled Vocabulary. The basic idea is that Logos builds a database of synonyms for topics, so that if, for example, I search for Donkey Logos knows that I could also want information on Ass.

(On a sidenote, when I typed "donkey" into Logos Search, one of the suggestions was "donkeypopefart". My first thought was an anti-catholic intern had beat the system, but the word actually comes from my "The Rhetoric of the Reformation"!)

<hijack thread>

It looks like that the translator of that particular work of Luther had a job with the translation! I think it's from volume 41 of his English works. Personally I was surprised to find the word in such an old book. If you thought likewise, this makes more interesting reading that you might expect: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fart

</hijack>

Thanks to Logos, I now know how the Akkadian and Arabic equivalents (ṣarātu and ʾaḍraṭa if you're interested). The art of serendipitous discovery I think they call it.

And another hit led to some more interesting serendipity. I was already beginning to think of Monty Python's "I fart in your general direction" with all of this, so amusing that MP was mentioned in a Logos resource.

Louis St. Hilaire said:

I'll forward your concern to Sean Boisen. The LCV is a very specialized feature, at this point limited to only a few dictionaries. It's a rather involved project that does not just require adding tagging to the resource but integration of the resource's headings into the vocabulary.

I think this may be a case of (rather generic) pre-Logos4 copy, but, now that we've raised expectations for Bible dictionaries, your dispointment is understandable.

Sean would have to provide more specific information, but if the eventual plan is to get all appropriate resources into it, then, in the future, I would expect that we'll be factoring the additional time and cost for doing so into the production of new Bible dictionaries from the beginning. If, on the other hand, LCV will remain more limited, then we'll have to be a bit more clear about this.

Please try to bump up the priority/urgency of this LCV work. It's one of the most common disappointments with Logos we see on the forums. People remembering the old L3 topic browser and wanting to be able to do something like that in L4, people wanting a quick way to search for headwords in dictionaries and encyclopedias, etc. I understand that it's a huge amount of work, but it is one of the core features of Logos, so it needs to be done soon.

Rosie Perera said:

Louis St. Hilaire said:

I'll forward your concern to Sean Boisen. The LCV is a very specialized feature, at this point limited to only a few dictionaries. It's a rather involved project that does not just require adding tagging to the resource but integration of the resource's headings into the vocabulary.

I think this may be a case of (rather generic) pre-Logos4 copy, but, now that we've raised expectations for Bible dictionaries, your dispointment is understandable.

Sean would have to provide more specific information, but if the eventual plan is to get all appropriate resources into it, then, in the future, I would expect that we'll be factoring the additional time and cost for doing so into the production of new Bible dictionaries from the beginning. If, on the other hand, LCV will remain more limited, then we'll have to be a bit more clear about this.

Please try to bump up the priority/urgency of this LCV work. It's one of the most common disappointments with Logos we see on the forums. People remembering the old L3 topic browser and wanting to be able to do something like that in L4, people wanting a quick way to search for headwords in dictionaries and encyclopedias, etc. I understand that it's a huge amount of work, but it is one of the core features of Logos, so it needs to be done soon.

Here's a thread that has a lot of feedback on it from lots of people who miss the Topic Browser and are anxious for similar functionality to be available in L4:

http://community.logos.com/forums/t/3470.aspx

Sean Boisen said:

The Zondervan Encyclopedia is not yet integrated into the Logos Controlled Vocabulary, but it certainly supports many other features of the software.

All that said, we certainly want all the resources in the Zondervan Collection to have as much functionality as possible, and we're working on adding more.

It's true, the Zondervan Encyclopedia does already offer a lot of functionality. And I suppose there are benefits to releasing when you did instead of waiting until it was fully integrated into LCV. But the problem I see happening is you guys are getting ahead of yourselves with all the new pre-pubs you are bringing out. You're not able to keep up with making them fully functional with all that Logos is designed to do (LCV in particular). So the backlog of work you need to do to get all the functionality up and running keeps increasing, and user frustration mounts. I have no idea what your actual internal backlog is as far as tagging of resources is concerned, but the perception from out here is that there's stuff you've been promising for a long time that hasn't been getting done, while new resources keep getting announced. I would prefer to have fewer resources with more complete functionality than more resources with limited functionality, given that the number of great resources you've got available already is astounding!

Logos is still an incredibly powerful system, and I offer my most sincere thanks and kudos to you all for doing it. Keep up the good work.

MJ. Smith said:

Sean Boisen said:

The best news I can offer on this front is that I've been actively working to train my replacement so I hope our progress will be accelerating.

Well - the best news would be that your replacement (a) requires no sleep (b) is able to type of 5 keyboards simultaneously (c) has never made an error ...

The best news would be if your replacement isn't actually going to replace you but be added to your team. This project seems like it needs a team of 3-5 people working on it full time. And I don't see the work ever being finished, either. Think of all the new pre-pubs and community pricing titles that are coming along which are indexed by headword. Huge multi-volume encyclopedias, etc. Those will all need to be tagged with LCV.

Are you leaving the company or just moving on to other work elsewhere at Logos? Will be sad to see you go, regardless.

Rosie Perera said:

One thing, though: This only works for a limited set of words. I tried it for Abishag, and the closest it could come up with was Abiathar, even though Abishag is a character in the Bible (1 Ki 1:3) and shows up in the Zondervan Encyclopedia of the Bible: logosres:zeb01;hw=Abishag

There is a second workaround, which works for all dictionary entries, but it's slightly more complicated. To use your example, type look up abishag in the command bar. You'll get the first dictionary article for this word. You can then use parallel resource sets, or the + tab to show all your other resources (it's the list on the right).

Hmm, that doesn't help me any. What might cause mine to be different? I'm fully indexed, and a Basic search for Abishag in my Dictionaries collection does find it in those dictionaries. I suppose I should try rebuild index overnight anyway.

Is that the built-in BWS template or a custom one? Did you type abishag in manually in that box or did you get to the BWS by right-clicking on some other instance of Abishag? I can get the result you got using the right-click method, but I can't type abishag into the box and have it be accepted. Can you show me a screenshot of your auto-complete menu dropped down after typing a few letters of abishag?

Mike Binks said:

Dear Sir,

Your letter of complaint about the car we sold you last week is unreasonable.

Whilst we did advertise it at being at the cutting edge of technology and providing ultimate safety

 

• the car has brakes fitted to three of its wheels and we are working hard to produce a model with all four wheels provided with brakes. We have somebody working on it. In the meantime a workaround is to apply the breaks gently and lug the steering wheel in the opposite direction that the car tends to travel in.
• the very latest and brightest of light fittings are included in the car, these are working fully, the reason that the lights are dim is that we have not yet had time to sort out the electrics. Once a proper power supply is provided the lights will shine out with great illumination.

 

In the meantime we will continue to advertise our car as having all the features now, that  we hope it will have when we get round to finishing it.

Enjoy your new vehicle it has the potential to be the best car on the road.

Sorry to hear that you have sold your old one before you realised the features or our model were coming someday.

tootle pip

Mike

Hee hee, very funny. [:)]

BTW, I take your tongue-in-cheek letter as a response to me and Mark. But we're just trying to work something out between the two of us. Not necessarily to help you with your dissatisfaction. Well, we were (and it was for my own benefit too), but obviously you didn't appreciate our help. We're all in this boat together. So it doesn't really help to be sarcastic to those who are trying to help, though I did catch your sense of humor (I think). You need to call Logos directly, though, if you're really quite irritated with them. You always sound so cheerful though -- with the way you sign off "tootle pip" -- that I can't really believe you're upset. Are you?

Cheerio! [:)]

Sean Boisen said:

Todd Phillips said:

Unlike others, this is my biggest disappointment with Logos4.  In
addition to the dictionaries yet to be tagged, the LCV excludes
historical terms, theological terms, personal names, and other technical
terms, which means that my historical, theological, and biographical
dictionaries are excluded by default from topic searches (not to
mention, my Columbia Encyclopedia and English dictionaries).  I have to
use a basic search for those.  I'm hoping some of those will eventually
be included in the topic search results.

Todd:

These claims aren't quite correct. The LCV includes more than 2000
personal names (as of tonight, the current internal version has 2235 to
be exact). While i don't have an easy way to count the historical or
theological terms, i'm quite certain hundreds of the other 8000 terms
describe just those kinds of concepts.

On the other hand, you're correct that the Columbia Encyclopedia
isn't currently included, and neither are the English dictionaries like
Merriam-Webster. Our highest priority at present is integrating
resources that are specific to Biblical studies: that includes other
Bible dictionaries, specialized reference works like the Archaeological
Encyclopedia of the Holy Land, the Zondervan Encyclopedia, etc.

I'm
sorry to have spread disinformation.  I guess I was basing it on old
info and on not seeing topic results for those kinds of searches (Like
"calvin" or "deism" or "apologetics"). 

I appreciate that you have a prioritized list--I hope that the IVP dictionaries are very high on the list.  I'm also hoping that some resources that aren't directly related to "Biblical Studies" per se are on your list, like Oxford dictionary of the Christian Church, the New Dictionary of Theology, the Dictionary of Christianity in America and other similar are also fairly high on the list. 

I'm assuming in the future I can type in the last name of an individual, and get results for all person topics with that last name?