Some Help with Notes, Clippings, and Highlights Please

Let’s say that I’m writing a book, and I’m performing some preliminary research. Could you please, in the context I just stated, tell me when I would use a note instead of a clipping instead of a highlighting, and how one would be better used in a certain circumstance over another? Also, is there a particular way I might want to label them or tag them or whatever in order to search them for research purposes? Thanks in advance for your help.

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Graham Criddle

Hi Cynthia

Could you please, in the context I just stated, tell me when I would use a note instead of a clipping instead of a highlighting, and how one would be better used in a certain circumstance over another?

My advice would be:

To save extracts of books you are reading for future reference use clippings - one of the benefits of using clippings over notes here is that the clipping contains full bibliographical information in an easily accessible form
To highlight areas of interest use highlights
To make you own notes - either on parts of the resources or to capture your own thoughts use notes

I think that's the way the software is designed to be used so is probably the easiest approach.

Some thoughts:

You may want to highlight resources that you "clip" so there is a visual indication that you have done so
It's worth making the effort of setting up highlighting palettes so highlights go into the same Notes document as Notes - that way you will keep them together
If you want to convert a highlight into a note you can simply add content to the highlight
And some of the details of this will change - specifically around highlights and notes - in the new notes system but the principles will be the same

In the screenshot below I have set up something like this (top-left a clippings document, bottom left a notes file and the actual resource on the right)

I can search these documents using a Basic Search on "Your Documents"

This finds the entries but - as you can see - it also includes all other documents that have matching terms

I have tagged both the Notes Document and Clippings document with the tag LDC and I can search for those tags

But I'm not aware of a mechanism to search for a specific string only in documents with that tag.

Hope this helps to get your started.

Graham

Cynthia in Florida

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/991981#Comment_991981

Graham: Thank you very much! Yes it does! Thanks also for the very clear explanation and the visuals. That helps immensely!

Tom Vidal

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/991985#Comment_991985

One little follow-up question that I'd like to throw out there.

Is it the better practice to keep highlights separate from regular notes (I appreciate that they are treated the same in the software) or keep them together in one file. E.g, if I keep all my notes on the book of Hebrews in one note file (which I do) is is better keep the highlights/inductive markings in that same file? That is currently how I do it. It seems a little visually disorganized and if I wanted to turn off the visual filter for highlights but keep the notes, I would not be able to do that. Just curious how people think about/handle this. Also, I'm a beta tester for the new notes tool. Do you feel any such best practice would apply equally to the workflow of the new system?

Graham Criddle

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/994509#Comment_994509

Is it the better practice to keep highlights separate from regular notes

Also, I'm a beta tester for the new notes tool.

I think this second statement is key.

In the new Notes system, the need to keep notes / highlights in specific Notes Documents disappears - although you can create and use "Notebooks" if you like.

With the ability to filter by either note or highlight then questions about whether they should be stored separately or together would seem to disappear.

So I suggest not worrying about best practice for the old / current stable system and think about how it will work in the new.

And there - as I say - we should be able to just create notes and / or highlights and then filter down to the ones we are interested in.

Do you see how this works in the new Tool, are there issues you are having with it?

Tom Vidal

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/994522#Comment_994522

Graham, thank you. This is helpful. I'm glad you've pointed this out re the new notes tool. I have not adjusted my mindset to having a single notebook -- or no notebook, as the case may be -- so I still have notes in the separate walled gardens of my existing notebooks. I'm glad to know that the concept is to have one global notes file and I will start organizing my notes that way. (I have been using the filter feature, I've just had it filter down to the notebook level.)

This seems to make great sense, though. I have had challenges because I have topic-based notes files and Bible-book (or other resources) notes files and sometimes things overlap and I never wanted to save the same note in several different files. This should really solve that problem.

Cynthia - sorry for steering this a little away from your initial thread.

T. L. Brown

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/994524#Comment_994524

Um, there is a new Note tool that features notebooks? As far as I know I'm running the latest version of Logos...7.17. How do I access the new note tool?

Asking for a friend...

Terry

JT (alabama24)

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/994578#Comment_994578

Um, there is a new Note tool that features notebooks?

This is a FUTURE feature, which is in beta. I think the feature is currently "web only."

Graham Criddle

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/994578#Comment_994578

Um, there is a new Note tool that features notebooks? As far as I know I'm running the latest version of Logos...7.17. How do I access the new note tool?

Asking for a friend...

Terry

Details of how to join the desktop beta are at https://community.logos.com/forums/t/159247.aspx

But please note the warnings about this being beta software - and please be aware that not all notes functionality is currently available in the beta.

Tom Vidal

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/994578#Comment_994578

[:D]

Tell your friend to try the beta. He or she will be very happy with the experience.

RyanB

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/991981#Comment_991981

To save extracts of books you are reading for future reference use clippings - one of the benefits of using clippings over notes here is that the clipping contains full bibliographical information in an easily accessible form

Just to add to Graham's excellent post, if I remember correctly (it's been awhile), from a clippings document you can easily produce a full bibliography, but you can't do this with a note document. Not sure if a bibliography is important to your book, but if so, you may want to keep a clippings.