VERBUM TIP of the day: Passage Guides as record of work

Admittedly, there are some flaws in the workflow of this tip that require action on the part of Faithlife but I still find it useful. The same principles apply if one is doing any Bible study where you expect to return to the same passage again and would like a "permanent" record of your work.

1. When you create the Passage Guides for the multiple passages of the liturgical date, enter a title to group the multiple passages - I use and abbreviated liturgical date - and an informative title - for example Responsorial Psalm 106 (I get carried away) You may wish to enter some notes as well. Note that I convert discontinuous passages into a continuous passage and handle the "verses to ignore" internally buy ignoring them. If you are simply wanting to save your work, I still suggest that you give it a title that will remind you it is an intentionally saved document.

2.When you return to this Passage Guide months or years later, the first thing you will want to do is refresh to context to update the data. Unfortunately a refresh will not add any new sections that have been added to the template. For these you need to use the Add function. This is this biggest issue in using saved guides that I have found.

3. In the Commentaries Section(s), I use the star to indicate whether or not I have read the commentary - a repurposing of a feature. Unfortunately, this is the only section that has a direct way to identify items as "read". In other cases, I use the Notes section to record what I have read as especially useful / not useful / other.

4. Use the notes section to record items you wish to explore further. This gives you a "task list" for a passage that you can pick up at any time rather than limiting your task list to current priorities.

5. As you add notes, clippings, passages lists etc. for the passage they will automatically appear in the My Content section, tying the Guide to your work on the passage. The Note section here I use to link to any tool I found particularly helpful that doesn't have a direct link in the Passage Guide (or at least one I'll remember where to find).

6. For long lists of references, I turn them into a Passage List when the option is offered, retitle the Passage List to imply that it is just a worklist for study, add notes regarding references I've find useful or interesting and delete entries when they have been read. Next time through, the references I haven't reviewed are the only ones left ... so I'm not picking the same ones time and time again.

7. Finally, I can use a feature that "almost" works. From the lectionary page, I can select a reading and from the right-click Context Menu open a Passage Guide. Unfortunately when I have adjusted the reference to be continuous, it does not offer my saved Passage Guide. But when I open the new (unneeded) Passage Guide it provides the link to my saved Passage Guide.

There are probably better ways to accomplish some of these functions and there are probably additional functions that can be achieved - I'd love to hear them.