Introducing Personal Letter Labeling and Searching
One of our priorities is to continue to deliver on the promise that Logos editions add significant value to the content we digitize and sell. One of the ways we deliver on that promise is by marking up the content with rich tagging and then exposing that markup in powerful ways like searching, guide sections, etc.
We started labeling sermons last year and have continued to roll it out across the hundreds of volumes of sermons we have in our format. It's been met with great enthusiasm.
With Logos 6 we rolled out journal article labeling. We're in the process of updating all of our journals with this new markup to enable you to perform powerful, precise searches and access the content in the new journals guide section.
We're now in the process of developing personal letters labeling. The details are still being sorted out, but it'll probably include labeling personal letters by author, recipient, date, and location. (A couple other ideas were type and topic.) We've also discussed labeling the parts of letters: salutation, body, closing, signature, and postscript. (If we do it, it may come at a later date.)
Initially, you'll be able to leverage this tagging through label searching. Eventually, though, we'd like to expose it in other ways like we've done with the sermons and journals guide sections.
We're planning to introduce this new labeling and functionality with The Works of Jonathan Edwards (26 vols.), which should ship later this month and contains 236 of his letters, and The C.S. Lewis Collection (30 vols.), which just went up on Pre-Pub yesterday and contains over 4,000 pages of Lewis's letters. We think this labeling will make both of these products even more useful and valuable. For example, you'll be able to quickly find or search within all of Edwards's letters to George Whitefield or Lewis's letters to Tolkien.
I'd love to get your feedback on a few things:
- Would you find this useful?
- Do you have suggestions for how we can maximize this added value?
- What other types of content would you like us to consider marking up in the future?
Thanks!
Comments
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1. Yes. This sounds great!
2. As always, maximize the added value by testing it thoroughly, letting plenty of beta testers give it a whirl before you say it's done.
3. I've said this before, but I still would like to see sub-books within larger books (e.g., all of Francis Schaeffer's works, which are in one single resource in Logos) marked up so they can be searched as if they were regular books in our library, so they can be placed in collections, and such. Call them "virtual books" or whatever. Having them buried within resources makes it very hard for them to be exposed to our rich use of them in Logos. This would go for all of the works buried inside Early Church Fathers too, and many many other such books. Thanks!
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Yes, I would find personal letters useful. However, I would find hymns and poems even more useful with tags such as author, title, occasion of creation (often null), meter (important for tune selection), form, scriptural reference .... it is a case where I would not expect Logos to do heavy researching but to allow users to "fill in the details" of the attributes.
As for letters, the additional attribute I'd like to see is "in response to" where the value might be text or a link to someone else's letter, news event etc. ...
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."
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Another possibility that occurs to me for this sort of markup is prayers - author, occasion, secular date, liturgical date ...
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."
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Rosie Perera said:
3. I've said this before, but I still would like to see sub-books within larger books (e.g., all of Francis Schaeffer's works, which are in one single resource in Logos) marked up so they can be searched as if they were regular books in our library, so they can be placed in collections, and such. Call them "virtual books" or whatever. Having them buried within resources makes it very hard for them to be exposed to our rich use of them in Logos. This would go for all of the works buried inside Early Church Fathers too, and many many other such books. Thanks!
Completely agree. This is high on the list to address.
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MJ. Smith said:
I would find hymns and poems even more useful with tags such as author, title, occasion of creation (often null), meter (important for tune selection), form, scriptural reference
That was next on my list.
MJ. Smith said:As for letters, the additional attribute I'd like to see is "in response to" where the value might be text or a link to someone else's letter, news event etc. ...
That's a good suggestion.
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MJ. Smith said:
Another possibility that occurs to me for this sort of markup is prayers - author, occasion, secular date, liturgical date ...
Also on my list, but likely not as much material to work with as some of the other types of content.
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Phil Gons said:Rosie Perera said:
3. I've said this before, but I still would like to see sub-books within larger books (e.g., all of Francis Schaeffer's works, which are in one single resource in Logos) marked up so they can be searched as if they were regular books in our library, so they can be placed in collections, and such. Call them "virtual books" or whatever. Having them buried within resources makes it very hard for them to be exposed to our rich use of them in Logos. This would go for all of the works buried inside Early Church Fathers too, and many many other such books. Thanks!
Completely agree. This is high on the list to address.
[Y]
Phil Gons said:
MJ. Smith said:Another possibility that occurs to me for this sort of markup is prayers - author, occasion, secular date, liturgical date ...
Also on my list, but likely not as much material to work with as some of the other types of content.
Ha! That suggests the need to get more content, i.e., more anthologies of prayers. [:)] I have quite a good number of them in print (a dozen or more) and could prepare a list for Bill Nienhuis.
There are already a lot of books of collected prayers in Logos actually (most of them only by one author), so I do think you have enough content to start adding this kind of tagging already. Here's a bibliography of all the ones I have in my Logos Library:
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Rosie Perera said:
There are already a lot of books of collected prayers in Logos actually (most of them only by one author), so I do think you have enough content to start adding this kind of tagging already.
I have a lot too ... but primarily in liturgical books [;)]
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."
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Topic would be by far the most useful tagging on personal letters for my uses. I suspect most pastors would find it helpful for finding quotes and illustrations for the topic they're preaching on each week.
PS - If you integrate the type tag I'll probably end up buying more collections of letters for just that purpose.
PPS - If you integrate the type tag and allow me to see what personal letters I don't already have discuss that topic I'd be even more likely to purchase collections of personal letters.
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MJ. Smith said:Rosie Perera said:
There are already a lot of books of collected prayers in Logos actually (most of them only by one author), so I do think you have enough content to start adding this kind of tagging already.
I have a lot too ... but primarily in liturgical books
Those should be tagged too. Not a matter to wink about.
I should have included The Book of Common Prayer in my Prayer Anthologies collection. It has some of the most amazing liturgical prayers I know. I built it up only by searching for things with "Prayers" in the title and then excluding books that didn't belong in the collection.
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I have a leather pocket prayer book from the early 1900's that has wonderful prayers from old liturgical prayers ... the Mozarabic prayers are as good or better than the BCP which, as you note, is one of the best.
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."
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Dave Moser said:
PPS - If you integrate the type tag and allow me to see what personal letters I don't already have discuss that topic I'd be even more likely to purchase collections of personal letters.
If you sell more collections of letters and tag them appropriately, I'd love to buy more collections of letters. There are many good books of letters that I'd love to see Logos carry:
Collected Letters of John Newton
Luther: Letters of Spiritual Counsel (Library of Christian Classics) - yes, probably all included in Luther's Works, but it's nice to have the letters of spiritual counsel collected together in one volume
Letters to a Niece by Baron F. Von Hügel - classic letters of spiritual guidance
Letters to Marc About Jesus by Henri Nouwen - but don't get me started on Henri Nouwen; we need lots of his works, any of his works!
Fenelon's Spiritual Letters (Library of Spiritual Classics)
The Letters of Vincent van Gogh - amazing stuff; though you would wonder what it has to do with Logos, Van Gogh wanted to be a pastor before he became an artist, and his letters are very revealing of the deeply troubled soul of a person wrestling with pastoral calling vs. the vocation of an artist.
Godly & Righteous, Peevish & Perverse: Clergy & Religions in Literature & Letters: An Anthology edited by Raymond Chapman
And then a book about letters as a genre:
Inklings of Reality: Essays Toward a Christian Philosophy of Letters by Donald T. Williams
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Rosie Perera said:
Ha! That suggests the need to get more content, i.e., more anthologies of prayers.
I have quite a good number of them in print (a dozen or more) and could prepare a list for Bill Nienhuis.There are already a lot of books of collected prayers in Logos actually (most of them only by one author), so I do think you have enough content to start adding this kind of tagging already. Here's a bibliography of all the ones I have in my Logos Library:
I guess we have more than I thought we did.
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Dave Moser said:
Topic would be by far the most useful tagging on personal letters for my uses. I suspect most pastors would find it helpful for finding quotes and illustrations for the topic they're preaching on each week.
PS - If you integrate the type tag I'll probably end up buying more collections of letters for just that purpose.
PPS - If you integrate the type tag and allow me to see what personal letters I don't already have discuss that topic I'd be even more likely to purchase collections of personal letters.
Thanks for the feedback.
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