Library

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 Using Library

See Also
 Prioritizing
 Ratings
 Tagging
 Collections
 FAQ on Resources



Updated for Logos version 24+




This wiki article describes the features of your Library, how to organize it,
how to find books and how to add books.




Page Contents




Your Library

Opening the Library window

There are several methods that you can use to open the Library window.

  • Opening as a Drop Down
    Click on the Library icon in the main toolbar. A large drop down showing your Library will appear.
    This allows you to use the Library without opening a window.
    When you have finished, just click outside the Library drop down and it will close.
  • Opening using Drag & Drop
    In the main toolbar, click on the Library icon and drag it to the new location, which can be a new tile or a new panel (tab).
  • Opening using the right click method
    In the main toolbar, right click on the Library icon.
    • Open (default) will essentially open a first copy of the Library in a tab.
      A mouse double-click will also use this mode.
    • Open in a new tab will essentially open a second (2nd) copy of Library in a new tab.
      • After either operation, you might want to move the tab to a better location using Drag and Drop.
    • Open in a floating window can open multiple copies of Library in a floating window.
      • The keyboard Ctrl+L can also be used for this.



The Library’s toolbar



  1. Sidebar: This opens/closes a pane on the left side of your Library window.
  2. Find box: Use this to filter books in your Library.
  3. Library: select this to view your books.
    • Yours in Logos 9.
  4. Add to Library: select this to purchase books or add to your print library
    • Store in Logos 9 (to purchase books).
  5. View method:
    1. Details
    2. Tile
      • This shows your books in a vertical tile, with selected metadata.


    3. Cover
      • This shows books by their cover image


  6. Sidebar/Information: This opens/closes a pane on the right side of your library window (previously used for Information only).
  7. Menu: From this you can select:
    • Prioritize Books
    • Information
    • Print/Export.


How many books are in my Library?

  • The number of books appears below the toolbar, when the Library is not being filtered.
  • If you chose to install a smaller/recommended number of resources, the Devices facet
    will tell you how many books are “Not on This Device” and how many are on “This Device”.
  • If you have books listed as “Not on This Device”, they can be downloaded as follows:
    • click Not on This Device
    • select the required books e.g. via Shift+click
    • Right-click and select Download
  • If you want to remove some books (as opposed to hiding them):
    • click This Device
    • select the required books
    • Right-click and select Remove from this device
    • They will be physically removed, and listed as “Not on This Device”.
  • OUTSIDE Library and Search, Logos only works with books that are on This device.


Opening a book from the Library window

In Details view:

     

  • Locate the book that you want to open.
  • Click on its Title and it will open in a tab (you can click its image in other Views).
    Or
  • Right click on its Title if you want to control how the book is opened:
    • click on Open in a floating window if that is what you want.
    • click on Open in a new tab to open a 2nd copy.
  • If the book opens as a preview, then it is not on your device.
    If required, it can be downloaded by clicking on the Download now button.
    • this can be avoided if you filter Library by clicking This Device (under Devices).



Organizing your Library window

Available Columns in the detailed view

  • There are several items which you can select to be shown as columns in the Heading row (outlined below).



    This section will briefly describe each available Heading column.


 Rank

When shown, this column indicates how closely any found books match a filter query.
It works best when filtering for Title or Author, so the rank from a Type filter will be somewhat arbitrary.

 Reading Status

Full green circle = Finished, else green/grey indicates percentage Read

 Image

the book’s cover image (shown at far left)

 Type

the type e.g. Bible, Monograph, Encyclopedia

 Title

the Title, which you can change in the Information pane

 Abbreviated Title

an Abbreviated or Short title, which you can set/change in the Information pane

 Alternate Title

an alternative title (not used consistently by Faithlife)

 My Tags

tag(s) that you create; see Tagging

 Community Tags

tags assigned by other users.
Requires Show Community Tags

 Rating

a user star rating (integer 1 to 5), or community rating (dark grey stars) if no user rating.
Hover to see the community value (decimal), which requires Show Community Ratings.

 Languages

usually the language in which a book is written
e.g. where a Greek Lexicon is written in English, “Greek” will be part of its Subjects.

 Author

the Author(s)

 Electronic
Publication Date

the date the electronic version was Published

 Publication Date

publication date of the paper book from which this version was made

 Publisher

the Publisher

 Series

the series or collection of which the book is a part e.g. Tyndale Commentaries, Pulpit Commentary.
You can set/change this using the Information pane.

 License

shows whether the license is Permanent or Temporary

 Subjects

one or more Library catalog subjects e.g. Bible.N.T.John

 Last Updated

the date the book was last updated in your Library (defaults to when it was added/installed).
Sort this to see recently updated books.

 Devices

shows the mobile devices (if any) on which the book has been downloaded.

 Edition

shows who created the book:
eBook, Logos Research, User Created (or Personal Book).

 Last Accessed

shows when the book was last accessed.

 Most Used

Ranks books by usage; where 1 = most used

  • To change which columns appear or do not appear on the Heading row:
    1. Right click in a column on the Heading row.
      In the drop down list click to check or uncheck a column item.
      You can hide the book’s cover image by unchecking Image in the drop down list.
    2. You can drag the column to a new location.
    3. You can resize a column by grabbing the vertical bar on the column and dragging it.



Sorting and Grouping resources

  • Column headers can be used to sort or group Library content in the Details view. By default, the Library opens sorted by Title.
  • Clicking a column header will either sort or group the content.
    A further click will reverse the sort order (groups included), as indicated by the small arrow in the column header.
    If content is grouped, another click will collapse the group.
  • You can sort on multiple columns:
    • click on a column header
    • shift-click another header to create an additional level of sorted content
    • shift-click again to change the sort order.
    • a further shift-click will remove the sort level.
  • Library columns for Title, Abbreviated Title, Alternate Title, Last Accessed, Last Updated, Publishing Date,
    Electronic Publishing Date, Rating, and Most Used are sorted.
    The column for cover Image is sorted by Title.
  • Library columns for Type, Author, Tags, My Tags, Languages, Publisher, Series, Subjects, Edition, Licenses,
    Devices, and Reading Status are grouped by content.



    • These books are grouped by Series
    • Click on a group header to show which books are in that Series e.g. Bible Study Magazine
      Click on the group header to collapse it.
    • The double hyphen symbol (—) at the top represents books that are not part of a Series.
      This is useful when you group My Tags, as it lets you see books which you have not tagged.
  • Example - sort on multiple columns



    • click on Type column
    • click on Bible group header
    • shift-click on Reading Status (first unnamed column)
    • click on Reading group header
    • shift-click on Languages column
    • click on English group header
    • shift-click on Series column
    • click on a Series group header e.g. “The King James Version with Apocrypha”



Filtering resources in your Library

Using the Sidebar to filter resources

The sidebar utilizes faceted browsing to filter the books in your Library.
Some of the columns available in Details view cannot be filtered here, but they can be filtered from the Find box.

Note: you will usually want to know about the books that are on your computer, so you should first filter by
Devices > This Device if you have anything listed for Not on This Device.

        

Faceted browsing has the advantage that you only need to select the details you want to filter. For example, click Subject and select Jesus Christ (above).
To achieve that result in the Find box, you would have to type Subject:”Jesus Christ”. However, the facet result is more accurate because it looks for “Jesus Christ” as a single expression, whereas the Find filter will include “Jesus Christ” within the expression “Church of Jesus Christ of...”.

To refine the filter, select Divinity, or an attribute of Type (for example).
To remove a filter, click its x in the row above the Sidebar.
To remove all filters, click All in that row.

Using your Collections to filter resources

  • Click on Collection in the Sidebar, and select a collection.
    The results reflect books that are on your device, and a collection will not be listed unless this is true.


Using the Find box to filter resources

  • The Find box can help you find books in your Library; whether on your device or not.

Entering text in the Find box

  • First, it is advisable to be in Details view and sort your Library by Title.
  • When not using Search Fields (below), Logos looks for your text in the Title, Subject and all other fields.
    This method can be quicker than using Search Fields but you will have to manually scan the columns to understand the results.
  • Logos finds results even if the search text is just a part of an actual word.
    • for an exact match put a single word into quotation marks e.g. “sin” versus sin; where the latter will match sinner, single ...
  • You may search for strings (words in “quotation marks”) to get better results.
  • The wildcard * stands for any number of characters (including zero)
    • Just searching for * will list your whole library, which is helpful in constructing “All but...” exclusion searches.
  • The wildcard ? stands for zero or one character
  • Using parentheses ( ) gives you control over how Logos understands your search text.
  • Examples:
    • dictionary
      In the Library window, you should see several books with “dictionary” in their Title.
      But you will also see other books which you would not consider as dictionaries because they have data somewhere that is related to a dictionary. In the next section you will learn how to use Search fields to limit your text to a specific field (column).

      Try clicking on different columns in the Heading row and notice how Logos rearranges your list.

    • Eric?son
      This is useful if you can’t recall whether Erickson was spelt with “c” or “ck”.



Search Fields that you can use in the Find box

Search fields are extremely useful when you want to filter Library for a specific set of books.
Most of them are associated with the columns in Details view and are listed in the table below:

  • A Search Field in italics does not have an associated column, otherwise it is the sme as the Column name.
  • Field Syntax shows what you must enter in the Find box (or the Rule box of a Collection).
  • Extension Syntax is the syntax for an efficient exact match that is availbale on some fields.

Search Field Field Syntax Extension Syntax Example / Comment
Reading Status — {ReadingStatus} has values Unread, New, Reading, or Finished e.g. {ReadingStatus New}
Type type: e.g. type:"bible commentary" or type:bible-commentary
Title title: e.g. title:tyndale
Abbreviated Title abbrev: e.g. abbrev:TNTC
Alternate Title alttitle: rarely used
My Tags mytag: {MyTag} user tags e.g. mytag:creation, {MyTag "Creation"}
Community Tags communitytag: {CommunityTag} requires Show Community Tags = YES
Combined Tags tag: same as mytag: unless Show Community Tags = YES
Rating myrating: a user rating (integer 1 to 5). Use 0 for unrated e.g. myrating:4, myrating:>0
Community Rating communityrating: (decimal value) Requires Show Community Ratings = YES.
The value is shown on hover in Rating column e.g. communityrating:3.3
Overall Rating rating: (integer) Same as myrating:, but it will reflect the Community Rating
if the book is unrated by the user e.g. rating:>=3
Languages lang: e.g. lang:English, lang:German
Author author: {Author} e.g. author:"don harris", {Author "Harris, Don"}
Electronic Publication Date epubdate: e.g. epubdate:2017, epubdate:<2017
Publication Date pubdate: e.g. pubdate:2017, pubdate:>2017
Publisher publisher: {Publisher} e.g. publisher:crossway, {Publisher “Crossway”} and {Publisher “Crossway Books”}
Series series: {Series} e.g. series:tyndale
License license: has values Permanent, Temporary
Subjects subject: {SubjectGroup} {SubjectGroup} is more precise, but formatting can be difficult —> see Examples
Last Updated updateddate: {UpdatedDate} See this forum post e.g. updateddate:<greater Sept 19, 2020>.
{UpdatedDate} uses recent year, month, or day values e.g. {UpdatedDate 2m}
Date Added addeddate: {AddedDate} Same format as Last Updated e.g. addeddate:<less Sept 19, 2020>
{AddedDate 6d} —> within 6 days of current date
Devices device: {Devices} e.g. device:"Galaxy A5", {Devices "Galaxy A5"}.
{Devices} is more accurate
Edition edition: has values “Logos Research”, “Logos Reader”, “User Created”, ebook
e.g. edition:user, edition:logos —> for either Logos edition
Collection — {Collection} {Collection "Greek Bibles – TR"}
  1. When using Search Field: syntax
    • make sure there are no spaces between the field name and the colon.
    • when you enter the text to search for, make sure that there is no space after the colon e.g. title:dictionary
    • enclose multiple search words in quotes, or separate them with a hyphen (with no spaces):
      title:"biblical languages" or title:biblical-languages
    • Quotes imposes an exact match on words:
      • title:"matthew henry" will not find “Matthew Henry’s” commentary.
        Use title:"matthew henry’s" instead.
    • You can use partial words and/or wildcards as a convenience, or when your quoted words are not found:
      • title:matthew-henry
      • title:"matthew henry*"
    • You can use operators and parantheses for complex expressions.

    • Examples:
      • title:"holman bible"
        This will find books with “Holman Bible” in the title.
        But “Holman Concise Bible Commentary” will be not be included, because Concise splits the words in our search term.
      • title:holman title:bible
        This will include “Holman Concise Bible Commentary”, because both words are in the title.
      • publisher:nelson title:king
        Adding title:king restricts the books published by Thomas Nelson to those with king in the Title (full and partial words).
      • pubdate:>=2010
        This will find all books published in 2010 or after.
      • subject:Bible.O.T.Psalms or subj:Bible.O.T.-Psalms
        They will give the same result as the hyphen is ignored here.
      • author:"Harris, Don" or author:"don harris"
        They give the same result, whilst author:harris is not sufficiently unique.
      • addeddate:<Oct 2018>
        This will find all books that were added to your machine in October, 2018
        This is distinct from updateddate:<Oct 2018>, as these books may have been added to your machine in October or earlier.

  2. When using the {Extension Field} syntax
    • Note that this syntax is primarily intended for use in Collections, because it is much more efficient for repeated use.
    • The field name should be followed by a space, and then a value that must be enclosed in double straight quotes e.g. {Publisher "Crossway"}
    • The value entered must be an exact match (including punctuation) for the desired value.
      For that reason, it is advisable to copy values where possible.
    • If a value contains double straight quotes, they must be escaped with extra double quotes e.g. Definite "Value" ==> "Definite ""Value"""
    • Multiple values can be supplied by separating them with a comma (,) e.g. {Publisher "Crossway", "Lexham Press"}
    • You can use None or Any with a field e.g. {MyTag None}, {Series Any}
    • Wildcards are not supported.

    • Examples:
      • {Series "Barnes’ Notes on the Old and New Testaments", "Wiersbe’s “Be” Series"}
        It is best to copy these Series values.
        Barnes has a closing curly single quote
        Be has curly quotes, so it doesn’t need to be escaped.
      • {SubjectGroup "Bible O.T.--Psalms"}
        Note how this is derived from the value Bible. O.T. Psalms you see in Library.
        Being more precise, values like Psalms 1-72 are excluded.
      • {Author "Barnes, Albert"}
        It has to use the value you see in the Author column as "Barnes Albert" will not work.
      • {AddedDate 1y}
        This will find books added within 1 year of the current date.



Using Operators in the Find box

  • You can use boolean operators like AND, OR, ANDNOT to retrieve books.
  • Operators are written in CAPS while the search expressions and fields are not case-sensitive
  • AND may be written as the space character, whilst OR may be shortened by using the comma
  • Negation (exclusion of results) is effected by ANDNOT, or use of the minus sign directly in front of the search expression.
  • Parentheses ( ) can enclose a list of values:
    author:(barnes, roberts)
    • a list can be used inside a phrase; but
    • do not confuse it with author:”barnes, roberts”
  • Parentheses ( ) is often necessary if you have different operators in your search expression:
    (type:glossary OR subject:glossaries) OR (type:manual AND myrating:>2)
    • do not use characters for operators in this case.

  • Examples
    • author:barnes, author:roberts
      This will find books authored by Barnes or Roberts, but
      • author:barnes, author:”roberts” is more precise as it will eliminate “Robertson” as an author, whilst
      • author:(barnes, “roberts”) is more concise.
    • type:bible-commentary ANDNOT author:Barnes or type:bible-commentary -author:Barnes
      Either expression will exclude bible commentaries authored by Barnes; whilst
      • * -author:Barnes will exclude all Barnes’ books in your Library.
    • mytag:didache AND lang:greek or mytag:didache lang:greek
      Either expression will find the Greek books that you tagged with “Didache”, as opposed to the English language ones
      (this tag can be applied to many “Apostolic Fathers” books e.g. Lightfoot’s, Lake’s, ANF7).
    • title:("Commentary on the old testament", "Commentary on the new testament")
      This can be simplified as title:"Commentary on the (old,new) testament".



Using the Information Pane

Titles, Rating, Tags

   

 For single and multiple books, there are wiki articles descrbing how to change Titles, Ratings, and User Tags.
In the next section we will show how to change the Series.

Series

A series identifies a set of books that contain information of the same type (datatype) e.g. bible commentaries, bible dictionaries. The set of volumes may, or may not, be complete but the individual volumes are unique with regard to content e.g. the bible book of John is only in one volume, whilst all volumes may not cover all books of the bible (either by design, or because volumes are published over time).

The Series link in Logos enables the content in all volumes to be accessed from a single tab or lookup i.e. Logos will look for the book of John in all volumes of the bible/commentary series, and present that volume as the result.

You can use this feature to:

  • link books that were not intended as a set (a user series) e.g. a NT bible/commentary with an OT bible/commentary.
  • associate some volumes of one Faithlife series with another e.g. to complete another Faithlife series.
  • change the name of a Faithlife series for your own convenience.

But be aware that:

  • a volume/book can only be part of a single series
  • a volume of a Faithlife series can only be removed by associating it with another series (renaming).
  • if you renamed a Faithlife series, it will revert to its original name when you erase the user series name
    i.e. you cannot destroy the original series!

Single book

Open the Information pane after selecting your book:

    

  • Click Set Series and enter your Series name
  • To rename the Series, click the name and make your change.
  • To remove it from a series, delete the name; then press Enter on the empty box.
    • you can’t remove a book from a Faithlife series, but you can rename the series.

Multiple books

Open the Information pane after selecting the books you want to associate:

    

  • Click Set series for all and enter your Series name.
  • To rename the Series, click its name and make your change
  • To remove a user series, click Clear user series
    • a Faithlife series that you renamed will reverts to its original name.



Other info

Hiding books in your Library

  • When you hide books, Logos removes them from your hard disk and they will not show in your Library or your Search results.
    Even though they are no longer on your hard disk, you still own them and can restore them when you want.
  • See Hiding Books for details.


How to identify newly updated books

  • You can use the column Last Updated to find out which books have been recently updated, which includes any that were installed.
    1. Make sure you are in Details view.
    2. If not visible, right click on the heading row and click on Last Updated in the drop down menu.
    3. [Optional] Drag the newly visible column to a more convenient location.
    4. Click on Last Updated to sort your library.
  • The Last Updated sidebar filter will show which books were updated or installed over a given period of days.
  • The Added sidebar filter will show which books were installed over a given period of days.
  • But the Find box filters UpdatedDate and AddedDate are more precise (see Search Fields in the Find box) e.g.
    • {UpdatedDate 4d}, updateddate:<greater Sept 19, 2020>
    • {AddedDate 2m}, addeddate:<less Sept 19, 2020>
Last modified 2023 October by Dave Hooton

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