I get lots of promotional e-mails from various companies from whom I’ve ordered materials, computer programs, etc. A few weeks ago I saw something from Logos that caught my eye. I have a huge Logos library. In fact, once I upgraded to <a href=”http://www.logos.com/features”>Logos 5</a> (I guess I should be more specific…I was upgraded through the generosity of someone else) I was able to generate a bibliography of my entire library (something Logos 4 had constantly croaked upon attempting to do). The resultant PDF was 232 pages long. Yowsers. What a blessing! Add to that what I have in <a href=”http://www.accordancebible.com/”>Accordance</a>, in my Kindle library, and in my <a href=”http://www.mekentosj.com/papers/”>Papers</a> library, and I clearly have passed the tipping point when it comes to electronic versus printed resources. Anyway, I was scanning through an ad from Logos when I saw something about a memorization tool. I looked at the ad and went, “Now THAT is useful.”
Having gotten Logos5 up and running (the upgrade was easy, though, be warned–if you have a library my size, even a high powered MacBook Pro will get quite hot and bothered re-indexing your stuff) I have been busily entering my old memorization cards into the program so that I can make use of the memorization tool. I have suggested to Logos that it would be <i>awesome</i> if they could incorporate that feature into their mobile apps for iOS and Droid (since I use Logos on both platforms on my iPad and my Galaxy Nexus phone). Of course, you don’t have to have the full tool to use those mobile apps to work on memorization, but it would be really nice.
Anyway, looking over my Logos library, using my Accordance program every day, recording books to mp3 through my Kindle, organizing papers and articles in Papers—really makes you wonder how Calvin ever wrote all those commentaries without this stuff! But seriously, we live in a day where we have <i>so much</i> available to us! Programs like BibleWorks, Logos, Accordance, etc., have become so amazingly advanced, so amazingly useful, it is incredible. Talk about something worth being thankful for!
Which program is best? The simple answer to that is…the one you have been using the longest, probably. In other words, the “big three” can all do the same things when it comes to Biblical research. Logos is in the lead as far as a library program is concerned, obviously—which would give a small edge to BibleWorks and Accordance in the strict Bible research area, but they are all moving in the same direction. I started with BibleWorks and added Logos back in my PC days. I moved to Accordance from BibleWorks when the folks at BW told me they were <b>not</b> going to provide a Mac version. Of course, that has now changed, and BW is moving into the Mac realm (too late for me, but that might be useful to others of you). Logos went Mac right around the time I did, so I was able to transition my library fairly easily. In any case, many, like myself, have to “double dip” in the sense that I am invested way too deeply in each platform to abandon those resources and repurchase them in another platform just to have singularity. So I will have Accordance and Logos running concurrently. For me, often I am using Accordance to do my linguistic studies while using Logos for my commentaries and background materials.
For someone just moving into these programs, it is obviously better to choose one and stick with it. And these days, any one of them offers you such a massive amount of material, it is truly an “embarrassment of riches.” Surely something to be thankful for!
