Nested Collections

Mark A. Smith said:

My trial collection is a logical one: a collection called NICOT and one called NICNT both added to a new collection called NIC. I can't see much use for this 'feature' right now but perhaps we'll find one.

I've created a collection named Theology.  In it are three collections: Theology-Systematic, Theology-Historical, Theology-Biblical.

Theology-Historical and Theology-Biblical are created from books I've tagged with appropriate tags.

Theology-Systematic contains books tagged with four different tags: reformed theology, reformed baptist theology, dispensational theology, and arminian theology.

It works for me and was the collection hierarchy I was wanting in the v3 days. I can easily refine my searches this way.

I'll probably add another collection to Theology when I get a chance: Theology-Topics, that has books more focused on one or a few topics.

Mark, I've made a few collections, and nested them as noted above.  However, I find that they are not simply merged into one larger collection.  If I look at the larger collection, there is no distiction of where the resources came from, whether from a dynamic rule or from another collection.  So, when I'm doing a Passage Guide, if I select the collection to be the larger collection, I see results from all the resources in that large collection.  However, if I instead select the smaller collection, and start the guide again, I get results from only the smaller collection.

This means that we can make smaller collections like "Greek Dictionary", "Greek Grammar", etc, and nest them into a larger collection called simply "Greek". This way, we can have the best of both worlds, narrow collections and broad ones. This is just what I need.  It works in both collections and searches.

I haven't tested it on more than two levels (a collection nested within a collection that was nested within another collection), but the logic would seem to indicate that it would work in this way.

Does this work for anyone else?

Actually I use a similar system with my books.  I have a tag for Theology which includes resources that are also sub tagged into smaller groups such as Dispensational Theology, Reformed Theology, Systematic Theology etc etc.  My Theological Journals are also broken into sub tags for types such as Dispensational or Reformed.

This allows to to do searches based on whatever school I need to draw from in that particular study.  The broader class is there when I need to have a larger amount of data despite the leanings of the resources.  This was the first thing I did after installing and indexing Logos 4 [well after playing a bit].

This results in me adding multiple tags to resources but once done I can pull any of them into any broad or sub class I need.  For instance, my favorite Systematic Theology is Lewis Sperry Chafer's 8 Vol set.  It is tagged as Theology, Systematic Theology, Dispensational Theology and with a Favorites tag.  I can easily pull this resource into any other collection I want to based on the multiple tags.

Works GREAT for me

John Duffy said:

KevinTaylor said:

I have a tag for Theology which includes resources that are also sub tagged into smaller groups such as Dispensational Theology, Reformed Theology, Systematic Theology etc etc.  My Theological Journals are also broken into sub tags for types such as Dispensational or Reformed.

Kevin, I have started to make collections based on type, e.g. theology, systematic theology, doctrinal theology, etc.  However, I'm not keen to split them up according to the stance of that content type e.g. reformed, dispensational, arminian, egalatarian, complementarian, etc.

Instead, I'd like to be able to use tags to differentiate the stance, while using collections to differentiate between type of resource.  However, as I have been getting going on this, while there are benefits in using collections, and nested collections for detail or larger groupings, it seems to me that tags and collections do not work the way I expected.  I can group resources into collections and select which collection I do a search or passage guide under.  However, when I'm in the Library, I cannot see collections, but only have access to limit the selection by tags.  Is this correct?  Is there no way that I can search for a collection within the Library?  Is there no command line that will work? 

If I could use collections to distinguish not only collections, but also mytags to distinguish stance of authors, both within the library 'Find' filter box.  That would be great.

Any thoughts?

This would be a great feature to add and I agree would solve several issue with tags vs collections to get the right content at the right time.  See this thread for others discussing the same request, I definitely would welcome it!

http://community.logos.com/forums/t/5285.aspx

Great idea! I am going to honorably borrow your idea...

I cannot try this now (PC still dead [:'(]) but would a collection that started rating:>=0 and having all your existing collections in the excluded list result in a collection of resources that are not in a collection?

Kevin Becker said:

Nested collections will be very valuable to keep the prioritize list from being too long.

For example, you could make a collection of favorite NT commentaries and then prioritize that collection.

I am afraid you are not able to prioritize collection, only a series. I am still waiting Logos will allow to use the collections for the commentaries section in the PG.

John Duffy said:

Kevin, you can create a custom Passage Guide, and not include the commentaries report section, but include the Collections report, and select 'Best commentaries' and it will effectively prioritise them.

Correction: Sorry, this does not work the same way as I thought it did in the Commentaries section.  By doing this, it searches e.g. for the text "Romans 1:1" in all the commentaries in the collection and returns a long list of citations, but does not simply return a list of commentaries on Romans.  Hopefully this feature will be added back, as I loved it in Logos 3.  Prioritisation is not the same, as e.g. if I had three 'Best Commentaries' on Joel, only those would show in Logos 3, so I would know that they were the ones I preferred.  In Logos 4, a long list is returned, and I can't remember if it was only the first three that I preferred, even if they are prioritised at the top of the list.