December 2005 Archives

I apologize. I know it is confusing, and I am sorry.

Libronix is a brand name owned by Logos. The Libronix Digital Library System is what we call our software platform. Logos Bible Software is what we call the products that contain both the Libronix DLS and a collection of electronic books, because without the books there is nothing Bible-specific about the Libronix DLS.

Other companies use the Libronix DLS, too, under license from us, and they give their products (consisting of the Libronix DLS and their electronic books) different names, like eBible or The Essential IVP Reference Collection.

We created the Libronix brand many years ago with the idea of separating our technology from our content-based products in order to make it easier for other companies to license and use our technology in their own products. We did not use the word “Logos” in the technology brand in order to avoid confusion between ours and other Bible software packages; we also had secular publishers licensing the technology, and the word “Logos” did not mean anything in that context.

Back then we also imagined that we might split the company into two organizations, one focused on technology and one on Bible software content. We created the Libronix Corporation as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Logos in anticipation of that split. Our strategy has changed, though, and we are now completely focused on serving the Bible software market and our publishing partners in Bible-related publishing. Libronix Corporation still exists, but as no more than a file folder of paperwork and a separate phone number that rings at the Logos reception desk.

What do we call our product? Logos Bible Software. This is the product you can buy, in specifically named collections: Logos Bible Software Pastor’s Library, Logos Bible Software Scholar’s Library, etc.

What do we call our software platform? The Libronix DLS. This is the technology platform shared by many publishers, including Logos Bible Software. When you are installing or activating or upgrading the software itself you are working with the Libronix DLS, and all of those actions affect all the Libronix DLS based books you have installed, regardless of which product they came in.

And finally, Libronix is a word that we made up. That made it easier for trademark and domain name purposes. We pronounce it like “library” and “electronics".

Last week, I posted on the Lexham SGNT "running text". I mentioned at that time that there are three primary pieces of the Lexham Syntactic Greek New Testament:

• The Lexham Syntactic Greek New Testament
• The Lexham Syntactic Greek New Testament: Sentence Analysis
• The Lexham Syntactic Greek New Testament: Expansions and Annotations

Today it is time to look at the Expansions and Annotations resource. This resource is still in a state of flux, so the implementation may change somewhat between now and the time that the Lexham SGNT is released.

Nearly two years after the initial prepublication announcement, the complete International Critical Commentary Series (ICC) is finished... The commentary series that took more than 100 years to write (and counting) has been digitized in just over 2.

As you can see, this is one big set of books. Fifty-three bound volumes to be exact. When we posted the prepub page on December 12, 2003, we had no idea how many people would pony up $1,000 for the set. But we knew the value of the series for biblical study and knew that of any electronic publisher we were in the best position to get it done.

The books were shipped off to the data keying center and came back needing lots of correction. In particular, the ancient language text (like Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac, Coptic and Greek) required a team of developers to go through it word by word, correcting the files as they went. This turned out to be such a headache that we devised a new tool (dubbed Shibboleth and mentioned briefly by Bob on his own blog) to speed up the process.

The specifics about the ways Shibboleth speeds up and improves the process is fodder for another post, probably by someone who knows more about it than I do. But I can say that "there was much rejoicing" in the text development department the day the final volume was completed, ship-checked and ready to head off to replication.

And now, just over two years after announcing the start of this massive project, it is being delivered to users so that these important volumes can be utilized by seminary professors and students, preachers, teachers and other folks studying the Bible.

Today’s guest blogger is Ken Smith, General Manager of Electronic Publishing Services at Logos.

(This is the third in a series of articles about our nearly 60 publishing partners who market their own electronic products using our technology.)

Fortress Press

With some publishers, we start small and work our way up to bigger projects. With Fortress Press, it’s been quite the opposite. The first project we did with them in October, 2001 was the voluminous Luther’s Works on CD-ROM, co-published with Concordia Publishing House.

This massive, 55-volume work is one of the most ambitious projects we have ever embarked upon. Luther’s Works is one of those products, however, where the simplicity and compactness of the electronic medium vastly understates the significance, complexity and value of the work. For the price of a handful of print volumes, thousands of pages from one of Christianity’s most prolific and influential writers are yours in a format that is portable, easily accessible, and exceptionally useful.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, Fortress Press has since released a series of single or dual book/CD combination products that have proven very successful in the academic market.

     

Beginning with their Christian Theology Set, they now have 17 different titles in this category, including Hanson and Oakman’s Palestine in the Time of Jesus, Walter Brueggemann’s Theology of the Old Testament and most recently, Jewish Literature between the Bible and the Mishnah by George Nickelsburg.

We’ve recently made all of these titles available for sale on our web site, both individually and in an all-in-one collection. We like to think of them as free paperback books with purchase of your Libronix-compatible electronic editions!

Next: Galaxie Software

Each year here at Logos, we have an inter-departmental Christmas decorating contest. The rules are pretty simple: Each department decorates its area, judges come around at the appointed time, and a winner is declared.

For the past few years in a row, the Logos Accounting department has won both the decorating contest and the bragging rights. It’s not hard to see why: The “Accounting Angels,” as they call themselves, are a group of ladies who are serious about their Christmas Spirit. In short, the Accounting department has been something of a juggernaut in this contest.

Now that you are done with all your Christmas shopping (you are done, aren't you?) you may want to take a look at some books for your own library. We just added a number of titles to both Community Pricing and the Pre-Pub programs.

It is a great blessing to have a job like ours, providing tools to help people study the Word. We are thankful for this privilege and for all of you, our customers, partners, and friends, who put those tools to use in study, teaching, and preaching. Thank you for your support and encouragement and prayers.

Merry Christmas!

No, I didn’t just randomly press the V, S, and O keys. What these letters represent are the six possible arrangements of subject (S), object (O), and verb (V) within a clause. Several people have asked me, "How would I search for SVO versus VSO clauses in the Andersen-Forbes (A-F) database?" It’s pretty easy, actually.

Awhile back, I posted about the Lexham Syntactic Greek New Testament (Lexham SGNT). At that time, I mentioned I'd blog about the makeup of that project.

It's been nearly two weeks since that post. But now it is time to make good and describe the pieces of the Lexham SGNT in a little more detail.

The Lexham SGNT consists of three primary resources. These are:

• The Lexham Syntactic Greek New Testament
• The Lexham Syntactic Greek New Testament: Sentence Analysis
• The Lexham Syntactic Greek New Testament: Expansions and Annotations

This post details the first item in the above list, the Lexham Syntactic Greek New Testament (aka the "running text" of the Lexham SGNT).

Today’s guest blogger is Ken Smith, General Manager of Electronic Publishing Services at Logos.

(This is the second in a series of articles about our nearly 60 publishing partners who market their own electronic products using our technology.)

InterVarsity Press (US) and Inter-Varsity Press (UK)

IVP is an example of a “hybrid” partnership, where we have licensed certain titles from them (e.g., The IVP New Testament Commentary Series) and they have marketed others in their own product collections. As always, our primary goal is to make more quality books available to our users, regardless of how they are distributed.

After a few years of licensing books from both the US and UK branches of IVP, we were thrilled when they co-published their Essential IVP Reference Collection in December of 2000.

For the first time, best-selling and highly respected titles like The Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, The Dictionary of Paul and His Letters and The New Bible Atlas were made available in electronic format and compatible with all of our existing electronic books. All told, 13 of IVP’s best biblical dictionaries and commentaries are included in this tremendously valuable product.

In September of 2005, IVP released another significant electronic product: The Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (Volume I).

The first ACCS electronic collection includes twelve volumes from this monumental work in progress. Here’s a little trivia for you: What is the connection between ACCS and the Logos edition of the Early Church Fathers? If you guessed Tom Oden, the General Editor of ACCS, you know your Logos history! It was a partnership with Tom and Drew University that made possible the initial digitization of that 38-volume, nearly 19,000 page work.

Previous: Thomas Nelson | Next: Fortress Press

John Fallahee, who works in our ministry and academic relations department, returned last week from 12 days spent visiting the country of Albania. This is his mini-report from the trip...

In a unique partnership with Logos Bible Software, The Master’s Academy International and Southeastern Europe Theological Seminary we were able to train up the next generation of pastors with Logos Bible Software.

With generous donations from the local church, various individuals, institutions, and non-profit foundations each student was equipped with his own laptop, Scholar's Library, and key Logos compatible books like Theological Journals, HALOT, and BDAG.

These Albanian pastors were trained in theological research as well as equipped to teach and preach, with the assistance of Logos Bible Software. What made this event significant is these men have "leap-frogged" over their peers in the number of resources available to them to study as well as the equipping and training they have received to work with the original languages. In the words of one of the students at the end of training, "I am overwhelmed with the generosity of believers from America, and see now how this tool will save me time and help me preach God's Word better to my fellow Albanians."

Note: We have been cleared to use these photos on the site.

It was pretty dark in Bellingham, WA at 5:30 AM yesterday, but the lights were on here at Logos Bible Software. Scott Lindsey, ministry relations manager, was on the air with American Family Radio stations, being interviewed from his desk. (This is the problem with being on the west coast.)

Our receptionist and three salespeople dragged themselves out of bed to be in the office in case we got some calls. The phone lit up after Scott said “Imagine a truck pulling up in front of your home on Christmas morning with a complete Bible college library, and a research assistant for your own personal use.”

We are glad that so many people see the benefits of a large Bible reference library, and apologize to those of you who had to wait on the phones yesterday morning.

While going through digital images of books we've had scanned at Dallas Theological Seminary library, I recently came across this flyleaf in a commentary by John Owen.

Lewis Sperry Chafer (1871-1952; bio) was the founding president of Dallas Theological Seminary, and he wrote a systematic theology that we just shipped on Monday.

His father, Thomas Franklin Chafer, died when Lewis was just 11 years old. As you can see, the Owen commentary belonged first to the personal library of the father, was passed to the son, and from there to the seminary.

I've heard it said (by detractors of the digital library paradigm) that you never hear of anyone bequeathing digital books to their children. But I just checked with our manager of customer support, John Brandt, who told me it has happened a few times during his 6 years with the company. All we need is a letter from the executor of the estate and we can transfer the licenses to the inheritor.

(Note to self: update will to include name of daughter born almost 2 years ago AND specify beneficiary of digital library.)

I find it interesting that used print booksellers, who often acquire entire personal libraries from an estate or a retiring scholar, will sometimes keep that personal library intact. Dove Booksellers does this and lists the books as collections on their website. It's fascinating to look through the books that belonged to a notable scholar and see what they found worthy of owning. [Caution: this practice can produce severe book envy.]

But it's only a matter of time until the same thing happens with Logos Bible Software users who have amassed a personal library numbering in the thousands. Maybe someday you'll find yourself looking through a list of 1,500 electronic books owned by a notable scholar in a field you're interested in and we'll offer you a way to buy them all in one fell swoop as a custom collection.

It could happen...

When approaching a text, one of the initial steps of exegesis is to do some general background study, thus becoming familiar with the larger context of a passage. If I'm looking at a passage in First John, I should have a decent idea of the author, recipient and setting of the letter. Logos has several resources (commentaries, handbooks, dictionaries, encyclopedias, etc.) that should provide assistance with this general process.

After this initial step, according to many guides to NT exegesis (e.g. Fee's NT Exegesis) the next step is to work through the the grammar and syntax of the passage. Some guides mention that one should read (and re-read, and re-read) the passage. One must be familiar with the current context and the larger context for exegesis to be effective.

When you're familiar with the text through the reading (and re-reading) of it, you've arrived at the point where detailed picking apart of the text is required. This is the point where one really begins to consider issues of grammar and syntax of the original language.

There are existing resources to consult to learn these things; some are even available in Logos Bible Software. These should be consulted and applied. But detailed reading of a book that provides hints, clues and process for exegesis does not magically transform the reader into a competent and confident exegete of Scripture. This only happens through practice and repetition.

And this is why morphologically and syntactically annotated editions of the primary texts of the Hebrew Bible and the Greek New Testament are necessary. They provide an example for you to check your work against, to use in the sharpening of your own skills. This is very helpful when you don't have a hard-grading seminary prof check your work for accuracy.

This article walks through some ways to think about clause boundaries using Logos Bible Software; comparing these to the information provided by the Lexham Syntactic Greek New Testament.

Today’s guest blogger is Ken Smith, General Manager of Electronic Publishing Services at Logos.

While there are hundreds of wonderful electronic books included with our “Library” products or available for individual purchase on our web site, there is also a gold mine of additional books that may not be as well-known to many of our customers.

For nearly ten years, we have been partnering with publishers to produce products for them to market using our technology. Here is one of the first products of that type, released by Baker in February of 1996:

I have had the distinct pleasure of overseeing the production of over 175 products from about 60 different publishers in the past ten years. Today’s blog entry is the first installment in a series of articles that will introduce a number of those publishers and products.

Thomas Nelson Publishers

One of our first and most prolific partners is Thomas Nelson. In June of 1997, they released a collection of more than 70 of their best reference books titled Nelson’s Electronic Bible Reference Library (NEBRL).

The Nelson Reference & Electronic imprint has gone on to publish nearly 500 titles using our technology. In March of 2002, the NEBRL product was reconfigured, updated to use the new Libronix Digital Library System and rebranded as eBible™. Their other products range from collections of best-selling books by Max Lucado, John MacArthur, Charles Stanley, Jack Hayford, J. Vernon McGee, David Jeremiah and John Maxwell to the highly-respected Word Biblical Commentary series.

Most of Nelson’s products are available for sale on our web site, either in collections or individually. In fact, we recently added a “mega-collection” of 325 Nelson titles at a huge savings over the individual purchase price.

    

Partnering with Nelson has been a very beneficial relationship for both companies. Using our technology allows Nelson to carry a full range of the highest-quality electronic products with zero investment in programming. Adding Nelson’s outstanding reference and trade titles to the Logos “family” has heightened our profile among religious publishers and given our customers a much greater selection of quality books to integrate with their existing Logos products.

Next: InterVarsity Press

The Logos elves were hard at work decorating the place last week. I caught a couple of them (Jacquie and Tracy) in the act...

Click a thumbnail image to see a larger version.

I've posted in the past regarding a project we've been working on with the good folks at OpenText.org; to make their syntactic analysis of the entire Greek New Testament available in Logos Bible Software. It is a massive project, and it will provide oodles of chunky syntactic goodness to Logos Bible Software users to inform and sharpen their studies of the New Testament.

But that isn't all that we've got cookin' on the Greek Syntax front. We've been working on our own syntactic analysis of the Greek New Testament. We're calling it the Lexham Syntactic Greek New Testament; this post (including a video link, see below!) introduces the work and begins to discuss it in some more detail.

I should say that this project involves a lot of work, and that it will be released in stages as the work progresses. We waited until we had the first major chunk — the General (or Catholic) Epistles, Hebrews through Jude — to consider a release. The first release (as happenstance would have it, perfectly timed with Logos Bible Software 3.0! What serendipity!) will therefore include these books. We hope to release an update in the spring that will include data for the book of Revelation. After that, the Pauline Epistles will trickle out over the following year or so; other books after that. At least, that's the plan for now.

The Andersen-Forbes syntax data is now available as part of the Libronix DLS 3.0 beta. The syntax stuff is 200+ megabytes of data, so we've split it out into a separate beta download.

• Libronix DLS 3.0 Beta - http://www.logos.com/beta/download
• Syntax addendum - http://www.logos.com/beta/download/BetaResources

Once you've installed all of that, you may want to know what to do with all of this syntax information. I've written a short LDLS Syntax Crash Course which is available in PDF format here. You may also want to re-read some or all of the articles in the syntax category on this blog. Or you may want to re-read my ETS paper on the subject.

We are interested in your feedback and your questions. You can leave them as questions in the comments section of the blog, or you can do it on the beta newsgroup forum at news.logos.com.

More than 100 people have added themselves to the Logos Bible Software Blog map at Frappr! It's been immensely interesting to me to learn where folks are from and to view photos and greetings from many.

If you visited the page early on and haven't been back, here's the link again: http://www.frappr.com/logosbiblesoftwareblog

Update (12/12/2005): I removed the mini-map from this page because it slowed the page load time. The current number of readers registered on the Frappr map is 153; click the thumbnail image below to view the map and/or add yourself.

Blogging is developing into its own literary genre. A blog is part diary, newsletter, press release and soap box. And one of the genre's most distinctive (and annoying) characteristics is talking about itself. The Logos Blog is no different...for which we apologize.

This is the 100th post to the Logos Blog. We've been posting every business day since we started in late July, on topics ranging from personal to technical, from fun to features, and from soup to syntax.

Do you want more of the same? More of some and less of others? We would love to hear from you on what you want to see in the Logos Blog. Please take a moment and leave a comment with your feedback.

And if you started reading the Logos Blog recently, you may want to use the monthly archive links on the side column to catch up on older posts where you'll find tips on using Logos Bible Software among many other posts interesting, useful, and irrelevant.

Thanks for reading!

Another feature in the upcoming LDLS 3.0 release has to do with sentence diagramming.

Yes, we're aware that there are more ways to diagram a sentence than you can shake a stick at (pun intended). One of these methods is the "Block" or "Sentence Flow" diagram.

The linked video presentation walks through using the new feature. It is all contained within the present sentence diagrammer. The steps are simple:

1. Create a New Sentence Diagram document (or open an existing one)
2. Insert a passage
3. When inserting a passage, select the "As Wrapping Columns" option
4. Enter the passage and version information
5. Click Insert Passage

That's it. Now you can click and drag text around as you see fit. I should note that I didn't think too much about this particular block diagram. Looking at it in retrospect, there are things that need to be done differently. But since it is an LDLS document, I can just open the diagram and edit it later to clean that stuff up.

Video: 950x750, Flash, approx. 2 megs.

One cool feature here is that you can insert more than one column of text. So, as I did in the video, you could insert one column of Greek text and another column of English text, and match them up.

Or — hold on to your hats — you could enter different accounts of an event in the synoptic gospels and block-diagram them in parallel. You can use the stick diagramming symbols (like, say, brackets, lines or arrows) to draw attention to parallel groups or features. On top of that, all of the Visual Markup features are available in the sentence diagrammer.

All done? Go to File | Export. Look, you can save it as a PDF to show your friends, or to put on your web page or blog!

One of my favorite sales stories is about the Logos salesperson who sat next to someone reading their Bible on a plane. Our employee took out his laptop, opened Logos to the same passage, and nudged his seatmate. After an in-air demo the Bible student pulled out a credit card and placed an order right there.

At a company meeting we awarded our flying sales rep a small airplane model as a sales trophy. Not be outdone, two other sales people "earned their wings" in short order.

Statistically, it is not too hard to find someone interested in Bible study sitting next to you on a plane. But people carrying paper Bibles still outnumber Bible software users, so I was really impressed when Scott Lindsey came back to the office to report that the person sitting next to him on the plane was actually using our software during the flight. (Scott, of course, showed him what he could do with more books and sold him an upgrade.)

We are flying all the time and we love to meet our users. So when you are on the road, keep an eye out for the Logos logo on shirts and luggage tags and say hello!

Our guest blogger today is Dale Pritchett, co-founder of Logos Bible Software. And my father. But not in that order.

When I got back from the SBL meeting in Philadelphia I had this sense that Logos Bible Software had changed in some substantial but indefinable way. The demonstrations and conversations were of a different nature than the past. We have always demonstrated new titles and new features at conferences but yet somehow this year felt very different. As more and more people asked about my experience at the conference I began to sense why this conference was different. We at Logos had taken our first "space walk".

Logos Bible Software has changed a lot over the years but it has always followed a simple formula of better and better computer enhancement of familiar manual tasks. You work with a paper library, you work with a digital library; familiar tasks refined and enhanced through innovative software. And now there is Logos Bible Software 3.0 and suddenly it is like "Star Trek" going where no man has gone before. It is like the first time man walked in space. There was no earthbound walking experience with which it could be compared. Space walking is a whole new experience with its own rules, equipment, challenges and rewards. This is the analogy I was looking for. Logos Bible Software 3.0 is like your first space walk.

For the first time, the software is not mimicking a manual process. There is no print-based equivalent to our new syntactical databases. There is no published printed edition of a Greek, Hebrew or English text with every clause identified and tagged. There are no preachers, teachers or Bible students searching for "functional" relationships as opposed to "form or morphological" tags. We have never had the ability to look up in a book, or for that matter, a Bible software program, the answer to the question, "Who or what is the object of God’s love?" Not only is such a functional search now possible, the results, though derived in the original languages, may be displayed in English as well as Greek and Hebrew. The amazing thing to me is that the most complex linguistic functionality that has ever been featured in Bible software will have immediate practical value to the English Bible student through the use of reverse interlinear Bibles which allow Greek and Hebrew search results to be accurately displayed in English, Spanish or any Bible for which we have a reverse interlinear edition.

This is a space walk.

The challenge ahead will be to describe the new features in Logos Bible Software 3.0 without the comforting analogies to manual systems. In trying to explain syntactical data bases to a user the other day I suggested that viewing syntax was like seeing the Bible in sentence diagrams with exposed subjects, verbs, objects, indirect objects, etc. Searching syntax would be like having the ability to circle a section of the diagram and look for other matching structures with or without the words attached to the diagram. That’s my best attempt so far in describing the concept. I will keep looking for analogies that help. This is the problem of space walking.

I love the work of Edward Tufte, a data design guru who writes beautiful books that also serve to illustrate his ideas about design.

I was first introduced to Tufte's books shortly after I graduated from college, and immediately asked for one for Christmas (they're not cheap). I find that his ideas challenge me to pay attention to design in everything I do, and help me think about how and why design matters.

That's why I was excited to see that a new feature in Libronix DLS version 3.0 (the first beta release was recently posted, and all I can say is WOW!) is rooted in one of Tufte's ideas for conveying a lot of information in a compact, unobtrusive form.

In the second-generation Exegetical Guide, there is a small graph next to each word from the passage. It's called a "Lemma Density Graph" and it's an example of what's known as a sparkline.

Sparkline is a term coined by Edward Tufte to describe "small, high-resolution graphics embedded in a context of words, numbers, images. Sparklines are data-intense, design-simple, word-sized graphics." You can read all about sparklines in this draft chapter from Tufte's new book, along with a lengthy series of posts on how sparklines are being used in various contexts.

In the example below, taken from the new Exegetical Guide, the Lemma Density Graph sparkline indicates the density of the lemma ὅτι across the New Testament. The more a particular biblical book uses ὅτι, the taller the bar is for that book. Of course, the height is proportional to the total number of words in each book so that the graph is not skewed toward long books like the Gospels.

As you can see, the word occurs 1296 times in the New Testament. Each category of Bible book (Gospels, Acts, Pauline epistles, other epistles, Revelation) gets its own color and you can see that a yellow bar near the end is the big winner.

So which book is it dominating the graph here? By hovering the mouse over the bar in the chart, I can see that it's 1 John and the word is used 76 times.

This is not a surprise to anyone who has studied 1 John and noted the tight, logical progression employed by the author. The sparkline provides a great visual illustration of this rhetorical characteristic, and it's viewable at a glance, inline with the rest of the information.

I can even interact with the graph in ways that take me a step deeper in my study of ὅτι...If I click the 1 John bar, Graph Bible Search Results opens and I can choose any number of graphs to tease meaning from the data (e.g., Number of Hits in Chapter / Number of Words in Chapter) or export it to Excel and work with it there.

These sparklines can draw out all manner of word usage patterns such as hapax legomena, words peculiar to a single book or author, or words that appear more often in certain genres.

I think it's a very nifty little feature, one that I trust our users will find to be a helpful addition to version 3.0. I also think it's very cool that this feature is rooted in solid design principles from one of the leading minds on the subject. One of the things I appreciate about our application is that the developers pay attention to "small details" of design so that it not only functions well but looks great, too.

(Note: If you get excited by this post and decide to install the beta, please note that our beta releases are unsupported and be sure to read the warnings first.)