Prioritize Your Library: Let Logos Do the Work for You

When you type a passage into the “Go” box on the home page, Logos opens a passage guide and several resource panes that draw from your library. Unfortunately, it sometimes opens resources you wouldn’t prefer. When you search for today’s Gospel reading, Logos does a lot of work for you, but if it doesn’t do the work you want, it doesn’t help much.

We can see here that Logos opened the Gospel in the ESV, the NIV, the NRSV, etc. It also pulled up Haydock’s Bible Commentary. But maybe Haydock’s isn’t your preferred commentary. And while the other commentaries are good options, maybe you want to rearrange them, or maybe (if you’ve ordered the Navarre Bible Commentary or Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture) you want another commentary to appear at the top of this list.

To improve how Logos works for you, let’s prioritize the library. A few simple steps will make Logos do more of the work you want done and less of the work you don’t.

1. Go to the Library tab and click “Prioritize” in the upper-right-hand corner of the dropdown.
   (Alternately, use Ctrl. + L or Cmd. + L to open the library panel. Then click “Prioritize” in the upper-right-hand corner.)
   
2. Next, search for your preferred Bibles and drag them into the Prioritize list. You see here I have dragged the RSVCE and the D-R into my list, and am currently adding the NABRE.
   
3. Adding commentaries to the priority list follows the same logic. However, if you drag a commentary that’s included in a series, Logos automatically assumes you want the entire series. If you want to limit your selection to only one volume within a series, simply right-click and select “Prioritize this resource.”
   
4. Adding the Catena Aurea above Haydock’s Bible Commentary will affect the order they appear in our passage guide.
5. Finally, be sure to prioritize the Catholic Lectionary. This will affect the home page ribbon:

   

Now, when we enter today’s Gospel in the Go box, we get very different results.

Keep in mind that you can change this list at any time. It’s easy to drag your priorities around if you decide you do want Haydock’s to be your primary commentary after all, or if you would rather start out with the Douay-Rheims Bible. And right-clicking any resource in the Prioritize menu gives you the option to “Remove from this list” if you decide you don’t want the resource prioritized at all.

Priorities are a quick and easy way to control the resources Logos checks first. For more on this and other Logos uses and customizations, be sure to order Catholic Practicum: Learn to Use Logos Bible Software.

And after doing all this work to set your preferred translation, don’t forget to take a moment to actually read the Gospel today!