One of my favorites things about Logos is the journals, and I often prefer to read journals (not just use them for research) over books. There might be different ways to do this but I wanted to share the way I read journals as a daily practice if anyone is interested in getting deeper into random articles. I started using this method because I have so many journals and I wasn’t sure the best way to go through various journals to read on numerous topics.
I start by using the “Facilitate Serendipitous Discovery” feature in Logos. This is one of my favorite features in Logos and if you aren’t familiar with this, you can about read here: https://community.logos.com/forums/p/5493/60945.aspx
I have a shortcut on by taskbar that opens “Facilitate Serendipitous Discovery in Journals”. This opens a random article in my Journals Collection. Since I have so many journals, I never know what is going to come up. Occasionally I may close an article and try another one if I’m really not interested but I usually try to read the article even if I only have a faint interest. I do this because this really helps expand my knowledge and opens me to new ideas and information.
Here is my basic process:
--Every morning after devotions I open “FSD” in journals.
--I spend 15 minutes skimming the article and getting the basic thoughts and ideas.
--At lunch I go back to the article and usually spend 15 to 30 minutes on the article to get a deeper insight.
--If I am really interested in the article, I will read in thoroughly after I get home from work.
--If it is an article I really want to keep track of, I will add it to “journals” that I have in favorites.
I’ve been doing this for the last year and have read a lot of interesting topics and arguments that I would have never gotten to if I didn’t use “FSD”. You can use this for any collection but I would highly encourage this for journals if you really want to explore your massive journal collection. If you are an academic student, I would encourage this method to give you a quick and easy way to dive into academic studies outside of the classroom reading.
Hope this helps….Bill
Thanks for the idea Bill. I was aware of FSD but had never thought to limit it to a collection.
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How do you limit that to journals and make a short cut if it?
Michael McLane: How do you limit that to journals and make a short cut if it?
Make a shortcut by drag and drop to shortcut bar
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Thanks William for sharing.
I never thought of using FSD this way.
You have just helped me to find a helpful way to go through the journals.
Yes, this is a nice feature. Thanks for sharing
Thank you for the suggestion, Bill. I will try it out.
Pastor, North Park Baptist Church
Bridgeport, CT USA
Great tip - thank you! In addition to journals, I also set it up to use with some Spurgeon resources - his sermons and the Sword & Trowel magazine.
Thanks William and MJ for the tip and the know how. This is cool.
Fantastic. Thank you!
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Excellent tip William. Thanks.
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It works for all kinds of things besides Journals as well.
FSD in Devotionals
FSD in Apologetics
FSD in [Almost anything]
Start typing and see what serendipitously pops up. If you don't like what you see, keep typing anyway and you might make some other facilitated discovery.
Gao Lu: It works for all kinds of things besides Journals as well.
My favorite would be Journals and if not those, than Encyclopedias (which are basically Journal type articles (at least if the Encyclopedia is a thorough one).
Try making a collection of your Encyclopedias and doing FSD in Encyclopedias
My reasoning is that primarily, Journals and Encyclopedia articles don't require context of previous material that the author may be assuming you have at the point of the serendipitous landing somewhere in a monograph. So they are perfect for randomness. IMO only certain types of books would allow just popping in and reading a portion in the middle, without suffering the loss of understanding from what you've missed.
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Thanks for the great idea William. I have a collection made of Christian History Magazine. Thanks to you I'm now enjoying using the FSD feature for this collection.
James Taylor:Try making a collection of your Encyclopedias and doing FSD in Encyclopedias
I DO like that!
Thank you for the tip. Unfortunately I could not make it work on the latest Mac beta (6.7 Beta 3).
Can someone not on Beta try it out and let me know if it works as expected?
Thanks
Filipe Moreira: Unfortunately I could not make it work on the latest Mac beta (6.7 Beta 3).
It works correctly with the same beta release on Windows 8.1
Filipe Moreira:I could not make it work on the latest Mac beta (6.7 Beta 3).
Just to be sure...did you create a collection of journals first?
James Taylor: Filipe Moreira:I could not make it work on the latest Mac beta (6.7 Beta 3). Just to be sure...did you create a collection of journals first?
Thank you James. I had missed the need to create collections for the resource. I believed it worked based on the resource type (e.g. journals, encyclopedias, etc).
Nice tip! I have enjoyed using FSD in Bibles and some other resources, but hadn't thought of doing it for journals. Now I will.