TIP of the day - oldies weekend: Filter by library metadata

MJ. Smith
MJ. Smith Member, MVP Posts: 53,041 ✭✭✭✭✭
edited November 20 in English Forum

Philip Spitzer has provided the most useful help to creating collections to date (in my opinion). Look at the screenshot he provided:

I tried ordering the library by subject, but that's not the solution (too much detail in the subject headings). However, for my Bible collection, I noticed that the Darby subject starts with "Bible.--English". I put this in as the English Bibles collection search string and tada! There were only 2 entries I needed to remove.

Here is some additional information that can be useful in creating a collection.

Image - I don't know its use in a collection, if any, but as a side note you can perform a search for images! if you do a basic search for [#Images temple] (no brackets) you will be able to find pictures of temples in your library. Logos is currently going through their entire library tagging these images so this will be a great feature as it develops! It already brears significant fruit!

Type - use type: to filter this column

title - use title: to filter this column

Author - use author: to filter this column

My Tags - use mytag: to filter this column

Rating - use rating: to filter this column

Abbreviated Title - use abbrev: to filter this column

Alternate title - Not sure. Anyone?

Tags: - I'm assuming tags: but until it is used i'm not sure. When it is used it will pull the tags from other users if 5 or more (number not set in stone) tag a resource with the same thing.

Electronic publication date - use epubdate: to filter this column

Language - use lang: to filter this column

Publication Date - use pubdate: to filter this column

publisher - use publisher: to filter this column

Series - use series: to filter this column

Subjects - use subject: to filter this column

As an additional clarification, the library views columns are useful on several counts:

1) They tell us what data types are available.

2) We don't have to try to guess what terms to use with a particular type, just pick 2 or 3 resources that fits in the collection you want to make and look at how the subject is formulated. Then use the terms that most specific to what you look for:

  • Example 1: commentary collection. One resource had "commentaRY" in the subject but most commentaries have "commentaRIES". The resulting search string was subject: commentary OR subject: commentaries and it worked very well (I have not found yet anything I needed to take out as a false hit).
  • Example 2: apologetics collection. All resources I brought up on apologetics, had "apologetics" somewhere in the subject. So the search string subject: apologetics worked very well for the apologetics collection.

NB: My understanding is that items in the subjects list which are separated by a ";" are different subjects that this resource is associated with. In the case of apologetics, I found resources where the subject:apologetics was buried among others subjects. The search string "subject:apologetics" did bring it up.

Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."