Intergration Level of Our Add-On Books

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Posts 49
Mark North | Forum Activity | Posted: Wed, Jan 30 2013 4:24 PM

Sounds like the title for a dissertation....

Eh hem!

 

How do we know ahead of time, when choosing our add-on books, how heavily they are tagged and integrated into Logos? There should be some kind of tags, or a rating system of 1-5 to convey that to the consumer, defining various levels of integration.

Also, along the same lines...I have looked at some sample pages of books you offer. Some of those sample pages look like facsimile copies rather than digital text. I remember some books I was looking at that exhibited this were over 100 years old. I understand that the pictures used on the webpage may be used out of convenience, but issues like this should be clearly labeled when there is a deviance with the final product, especially when some of the books cost the same price of a paper copy (like DDD - great book, but lots of blue hyperlinks that go nowhere).

Posts 6264
Denise | Forum Activity | Replied: Wed, Jan 30 2013 4:31 PM

Well, I'm glad you didn't start up the old hulla-balloo about the intragration level ot the books. Goodness that was a rough fracas.

But yes ... when there's no look-inside the page-pics can only give a hint.  Quite often even Amazon is the better step.

That's why us users started http://wiki.logos.com/Resource_Review which still doesn't solve the issue you're mentioning.


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Philana Crouch | Forum Activity | Replied: Wed, Jan 30 2013 4:38 PM

Mark North:

Sounds like the title for a dissertation....

Eh hem!

 

How do we know ahead of time, when choosing our add-on books, how heavily they are tagged and integrated into Logos? There should be some kind of tags, or a rating system of 1-5 to convey that to the consumer, defining various levels of integration.

Also, along the same lines...I have looked at some sample pages of books you offer. Some of those sample pages look like facsimile copies rather than digital text. I remember some books I was looking at that exhibited this were over 100 years old. I understand that the pictures used on the webpage may be used out of convenience, but issues like this should be clearly labeled when there is a deviance with the final product, especially when some of the books cost the same price of a paper copy (like DDD - great book, but lots of blue hyperlinks that go nowhere).

On the resource page click see inside book by the cover and you should see a pop-up of the Logos resource. The links go somewhere if you own the resource that is hyperlinked.

 

 

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Mark Smith | Forum Activity | Replied: Wed, Jan 30 2013 7:13 PM

Mark North:
How do we know ahead of time, when choosing our add-on books, how heavily they are tagged and integrated into Logos?

Not sure a star system would mean much if I am interested in a specific resource's integration. Perhaps Logos could give us access to a database of what resources are linked to what other resources and leave it up to us to decide.

If Logos had a fully integrated resource (5 stars), would you want that to mean all possible links were linked or just the ones linking to already existing Logos resources? Might be a bit confusing.

I agree integration is an issue and something we'd like to know more about. For the most part I've discovered Logos resources are usually well integrated when released, but it sometimes takes awhile for them to 'catch up' as other resources are produced that could be linked to them. Sometimes the older resource is re-tagged almost as soon as the new one is released, but not always. Considering the fact Logos gets no revenue from re-tagging a resource, I think they are doing a good job trying to meet our needs. That of course doesn't answer your question.

Pastor, North Park Baptist Church

Bridgeport, CT USA

Posts 8212
fgh | Forum Activity | Replied: Thu, Jan 31 2013 11:15 AM

Mark North:
Also, along the same lines...I have looked at some sample pages of books you offer. Some of those sample pages look like facsimile copies rather than digital text.

That's because they are. A prepub often doesn't have, and a CP virtually never has, an electronic file. And even when one does exist, it's not been adapted to Logos yet. So before a product ships, they just give us what they have, often simply a few scanned pages from the printed book. It's only when the book ships that they switch over to the 'Look Inside' feature.

"The Christian way of life isn't so much an assignment to be performed, as a gift to be received."  Wilfrid Stinissen

Mac Pro OS 10.9.

Posts 49
Mark North | Forum Activity | Replied: Thu, Jan 31 2013 11:28 AM

If I understand you correctly, I would never be buying a facsimile "book" from logos? It will always be digital?

Or will they be searchable facsimiles? I ask, because I have seen this very thing with old genealogy books online. They are pictures of the pages, yet they can be searched.

 

Thanks.

Posts 8212
fgh | Forum Activity | Replied: Thu, Jan 31 2013 11:48 AM

Mark North:
It will always be digital?

Yes, certainly. Just like any other book in Logos. 

"The Christian way of life isn't so much an assignment to be performed, as a gift to be received."  Wilfrid Stinissen

Mac Pro OS 10.9.

Posts 49
Mark North | Forum Activity | Replied: Thu, Jan 31 2013 11:53 AM

Thanks again.

Posts 8212
fgh | Forum Activity | Replied: Thu, Jan 31 2013 11:56 AM

Go look at the sample pages for The Works of John L. Dagg (4 vols.). Then, if it ships tomorrow as it's supposed to do, you should be able to see the difference in the Look Inside feature.

"The Christian way of life isn't so much an assignment to be performed, as a gift to be received."  Wilfrid Stinissen

Mac Pro OS 10.9.

Posts 49
Mark North | Forum Activity | Replied: Thu, Jan 31 2013 10:31 PM

That book you cite is not as obvious as some of the ones I had seen previously. I'd have to guess that this is a facsimile and that would be based solely on the position of the page numbers on the page - looks unusual.

The other books I saw had very yellowed pages. You could tell they were old and not digital.

 

I will check on this one again in a couple of days. Looks like a good price!

 

Thanks for the tip.

Posts 15643
Rosie Perera | Forum Activity | Replied: Thu, Jan 31 2013 10:48 PM

Mark North:
The other books I saw had very yellowed pages. You could tell they were old and not digital.

Those are images from the print book from before Logos has digitized it. When they are advertising a pre-pub or community pricing book, they often don't have the digital files yet, so they can only show you a picture of what the contents are. But that isn't what they're going to ship. They are going to fully digitize it. Even the images from The Works of John L. Dagg which are not yellowed are still images from a print-based book, whether facsimile or not. It will be fully digital when it ships.

EDIT:

Here, for comparison, is an example of a work that has already been digitized and shipped and has a See Inside feature on the resource description page:

http://www.logos.com/product/8014/the-works-of-john-owen-vol-7-sin-and-grace

Even that is not exactly what it will look like in Logos software. It's just the Biblia viewer showing you some excerpts of the contents. It will look even nicer and you'll have more ability to control the display (e.g., resizeable fonts, multiple columns, footnotes at the bottom of the page or not, etc.) in the full Logos Bible Software for Windows or Mac. Here's an example of what that volume looks like in Logos when I have it arranged in two-column view with a moderately large font. See, nice and crisp and readable, fully selectable, everything right-clickable, links to Bible text where you can hover and it will pop up, or click and jump to the context, etc. Click my image below to see it full sized.

Posts 49
Mark North | Forum Activity | Replied: Thu, Jan 31 2013 11:15 PM

My point really was that it is not obvious for someone who is just "stopping by" and looking around. I looked at this site on and off for a couple years before I purchased. I bought the product, and had it for a couple of weeks, and I still needed you to help me figure stuff out. It doesn't have to be that way. Write it down on the web page. I can read.

What is obvious to veterans of this software/site is not obvious to new people or visitors. And as I said before, when they are SHOWING a facsimile but I am going to get something digital INSTEAD, it should be clearly stated.This is simply advertising standards. What you see is what you get? or is it?

There are always going to be new people, and there are always going to be browsers. My comment is to help them.

I'd like to also see some info on how deeply integrated various books are on each web page. Is there just going to be searchable text, links to the bible, and page numbers? If it doesn't release fully tagged and integrated, what tags and integration can I expect in the future? The bigger my library gets, the more integration is going to matter to me.

Also, I am a lay person. I am not a scholar. I am not a pastor. But I love reading their stuff!

 

EDIT: some of the web pages do brag about how integrated the book is. The key word is "some".

Posts 15643
Rosie Perera | Forum Activity | Replied: Thu, Jan 31 2013 11:27 PM

Mark North:
What is obvious to veterans of this software/site is not obvious to new people or visitors. And as I said before, when they are SHOWING a facsimile but I am going to get something digital INSTEAD, it should be clearly stated.This is simply advertising standards. What you see is what you get? or is it?

Yes, very true. Logos could stand to improve their marketing/communication to newbies and prospective buyers. It's a priority thing. It isn't something they've previously felt it important to put more than the bare minimum time into. They often fall short of even us old timers' expectations.

Mark North:
I'd like to also see some info on how deeply integrated various books are on each web page. Is there just going to be searchable text, links to the bible, and page numbers? If it doesn't release fully tagged and integrated, what tags and integration can I expect in the future? The bigger my library gets, the more integration is going to matter to me.

This is a good suggestion. It's probably impractical on a grand scale (they have thousands and thousands of resources for sale, and they are regularly improving them and adding more tagging so there's not necessarily a fixed answer to the "how integrated is this particular resource" question). Chasing this info down and keeping the website up-to-date would be a full-time job for a team of 2 people. I doubt Logos will want to expend the human resources for that when they'd rather be spending the time making more of the resources more integrated.

But still, I'm sure someone from Logos will be reading this thread and taking note of your proposal.

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NB.Mick | Forum Activity | Replied: Thu, Jan 31 2013 11:39 PM

Mark North:
I'd like to also see some info on how deeply integrated various books are on each web page. Is there just going to be searchable text, links to the bible, and page numbers?

No. This would describe the bare minimum (such as books from Vyrso.com - okay, many don't have page numbers). Logos tries to link all the resources cited. A good idea for you might to get the free Faithlife Study Bible - there you'll have links to deeper commentaries, to dictionaries and monograph works. 

The more scholarly a resource gets, the more it cites other resources, such as journals, dictionaries, commentaries, different translations etc. The value of a large Logos library is in the availability of links to these resources - and when you hover over scholar A citing scholar B, Logos will normally give you a large excerpt in a popup (or the information pane) and the opportunity to switch to B's work at exactly this cited position with one mouseclick.

Some old, often third-party-produced resources aren't there yet - and Logos is slowly updating them, free of charge for the owners. So, the level of integration depends on the resource itself (silly example: Beowulf doesn't cite much 20-century bible commentaries) and sometimes the age of the resource - the newer the better. With community features in the current releases, users can even add missing links they spot.

Hope this helps,

Mick

 

running Logos 5.2b SR1 (Classic MCs, Verbum Master+, Lutheran Silver) on Acer Extensa 5230E - mod. 4GB RAM & 250GB SSD - Win7 Home Premium 32bit & Android apps on Kindle Fire

Posts 8212
fgh | Forum Activity | Replied: Sat, Feb 2 2013 8:48 AM

Mark North:
That book you cite is not as obvious as some of the ones I had seen previously.

I know, but it happened to be scheduled for shipping the day after. I didn't want to direct you to something that wasn't shipping until much later, and which might very well get delayed until later still. If you want a yellower one, the first volume in the Early Egyptian Monasticism Collection (5 vols.) should do. It's supposed to ship next week.

Mark North:
My point really was that it is not obvious for someone who is just "stopping by" and looking around. I looked at this site on and off for a couple years before I purchased. I bought the product, and had it for a couple of weeks, and I still needed you to help me figure stuff out.

I've read tens of thousands of posts on these forums in the last 2.5 years, and I can't remember this question ever coming up before. So my guess would be that it's simply never occurred to them that anyone could misunderstand. After all, digitizing books is precisely what they do. When something's the most obvious thing in the world for yourself, you tend to take for granted that it's obvious for everyone else as well.

"The Christian way of life isn't so much an assignment to be performed, as a gift to be received."  Wilfrid Stinissen

Mac Pro OS 10.9.

Posts 49
Mark North | Forum Activity | Replied: Sat, Feb 2 2013 10:51 AM

As I have said, I have run across other examples of "digitized" facsimiles on the net and just wondered where we stand with these products, since the individual web pages we are speaking of don't make it clear to the noob.

You all have made it clear that these documents will be fully digital. I did not intend to make this sound like a complaint.

I have ordered old books from other vendors on CD and when I got them they were just pictures of the pages. So there is precedence to ask these things.

We obviously come from differing backgrounds, and see with different eyes. And that can be refreshing for both, I think.

Posts 49
Mark North | Forum Activity | Replied: Tue, Feb 5 2013 10:54 AM

Still looks like a facsimile (to me anyway) on 2-5-2013. But I understand what you are saying.

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Milford Charles Murray | Forum Activity | Replied: Fri, May 3 2013 1:51 PM

Mark North:

Still looks like a facsimile (to me anyway) on 2-5-2013. But I understand what you are saying.

Bump!   *smile*

                                    I can see this as being an issue for some folks....              I'd love to hear that someone at Logos has taken a look at this thread....                That's all!                       *smile*

                                                                                                                             Peace to all my Brothers and Sisters on these Logos Forums!

Philippians 4:  4 Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. 5 Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand..........

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Kent Hendricks | Forum Activity | Replied: Fri, May 3 2013 4:39 PM

Mark, you are correct that there are several areas here where we can improve. We have frequent discussions about the best way to go about this.

Here's a little background on why things are they we way they are:

Because most products start on Pre-Pub or Community Pricing—where a digital text often doesn't exist until we create it—page scans are the next-best alternative to give you an idea of the contents. It’s not a perfect solution, which is why we label the sample pages as being from a print edition (although now I’m finding a few instances where that’s not the case). But we do think it's better than not providing any sample content at all, although it sounds like we may be causing more confusion than we realize.

We’ve hesitated from showing screenshots because a screenshot doesn’t really convey what our resources are.

For example, the one of the many benefits of having a Logos edition of a commentary is the integration with the Passage Guide—but that’s tough to convey in a screenshot of the digital text of the commentary. Our resources are tightly integrated with data and tools, so any screenshot would drastically undersell the full capabilities and perhaps give new users the impression that the resources are more limited than they actually are.

This is, in part, why we’ve chosen to use Biblia to preview portions of live books. This functionality only works on books available individually (not collections), but this will be addressed in a future redesign. Rosie is correct that using the desktop app is a different experience from using Biblia, so it's not an exact preview, either.

We’ve also had discussions about how to dynamically display the extent to which a particular resource works with the hundreds of features. For example, if a resource has a greater-than-normal number of links to the Timeline, that would probably be valuable for you to know. (And wouldn't it be cool to find every product on Logos.com with more than, say, 100 links to the Timeline?)

These are just ideas right now. The bottom line is that we do read these threads and we are listening. We have regular discussions about all these items (I just came from one, actually), along with several things you may not have thought of. Smile We are planning on rolling out some enhancements to product pages later this year, which should address some of your concerns.

Posts 3534
David Paul | Forum Activity | Replied: Fri, May 3 2013 5:31 PM

I already discussed this somewhat with Bob, so I'm interested to see what lies ahead. However, let me suggest a modus operandi for current and future resources that are added to the Logos stable.

I think it makes a lot of sense to tag EVERYTHING that is a reference to another work, even if it is to a resource Logos does not currently have in its stable. Logos seems to have gone into a publication overdrive of late, and new titles come online quite rapidly. To me, it is the ultimate proactive, preemptive approach to resource linking. I'm sure most Logos users would sleep a lot better knowing that when a new resource comes out, not only will all of the links in that resource link to what is available in Logos, but every earlier resource that has a link to that new resource will now work also...instantly, right out of the box.

Obviously, this entails doing some work in linking that may never come to fruition. But I'm quite sure the positive sentiment this M.O. would engender in the customer base would be worth every penny.

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