Improving the Research Tab

[William Cross]

I am often looking for information from within the hundreds of tools I have purchased in Accordance over the past 22 years, but not able to find it.

It goes like this:

• I have a question about a topic
• I am not sure which resource to look in so
• I enter a phrase in the Research tab
• A gigantic list of resources appear
• I begin to sift through the results
• Don't find what I am looking for
• Open up Google and type the question
• Immediately find links to resources that have the answer
• Wish I could better access this info in Accordance

 

Could Accordance improve the Research Tab to search smarter? Possibly using natural language?

 

A simple example: "How many Books are in the Bible?"

 

Edited August 10, 2022 by William Cross

[Kristin]

Hi @William Cross,

If you are not finding the information it might be because you do not actually have resources which discuss it.

 

Typing "66 books" I found it in BiblicalTraining. Typing "sixty-six books" I found the information in Dict of Cults, New Ungers, BiblicalTraining, Kruger's Canon Revised, Bird's Evangelical Theology, and Grudem's Systematic Theology.
 

I don't personally have a lot of pastoral resources, but some other people who do would probably have other hits.

 

Concerning the "natural language" you mentioned, I would just like to add my two cents that I hope they do not do this. One of the huge advantages of the Accordance Research is that it is able to find pinpoint words and phrases in a vast library with extreme accuracy. If it were to use natural language then it would be needing to use less detailed searching including resources that do not even use the query, as basically no resource says "How many Books are in the Bible?"

 

[William Cross]

By typing "How many Books are in the Bible?" I was merely trying to illustrate my suggestion. 

 

Google's search engine is very good at finding info using this type of language and can also find pinpoint words and phrases when they are put in quotes. 

 

But to go with your answer, it assumes you already know that there actually are 66 books.

 

The great help of Google's search engine is that it can find info when you are not exactly sure of the word or phrase to search on, but just the general topic or keyword.

Something like this would be very helpful in Accordance when you do not know the exact phrase or word to look for. Sometimes the word referenced has different spellings or the phrase is off by a word (and you may not know that your phrase is off by a word), and Accordance does not find what you are looking for, even if the info is within the resources you own.

 

Again another example of something like this is searching for "Tuthmoses III", and finding no hits, but if I knew to search for "Thutmosis III" I would find all kinds of hits and info. Of course I don't know to search for that name in the beginning. Google's search engine can somehow find both even if I only know to look for one and then I learn from that search that there are spelling variants.

Edited August 13, 2022 by William Cross

[William Cross]

Still really hoping the Research Tab Search could be improved. I think this would be a significant and extremely helpful update for finding information within the Accordance modules.

[William Cross]

Another example of improving the search capabilities. 

I know the words "lying wonders" appears in scripture, but in the moment can't remember where. Typing in the phrase to the ESV search and gets nothing, zero. But I know the words are in scripture and realize it must be a different version. It would be great if even in a regular Bible text search "Flex" search could look first in the current text and then if nothing is found, default to search the other bible texts I own to find the words, or at least find similar words in the current ESV text. 

 

Google finds it instantly even though it searches the entire internet.

 

Accordance's sole purpose is searching the Bible and related texts, it would be great if it could find information more efficiently.

[KCarmanIII]

I second this. I know there have been times that I've searched for information I know I should have somewhere in my library only to not find it and default to google. On a separate note, I like the look of that UI. I wish they could make the windows UI more like its mac counterpart.

[Kristin]

@William Cross and @KCarmanIII,

I think that might actually create confusion if I am checking a version, and I get results for a totally random version.

For what you are describing, this already works in Research. Just make sure there is the = sign.

 

Kristin

 

[TYA]

Quote

I would just like to add my two cents that I hope they do not do this. One of the huge advantages of the Accordance Research is that it is able to find pinpoint words and phrases in a vast library with extreme accuracy. If it were to use natural language then it would be needing to use less detailed searching including resources that do not even use the query

 

My opinion as well, if I may: I would be open to a Natural Search only if it could be an additional option which doesn't subtract from the precision of the Research Tab (which already suffers from bugs in my case).  I do agree that things can be improved in the Research Tab, primarily pertaining to a literal (words between the whitespaces) for all Hebrew texts consistently, whether they are vowelized or not, whether they are tagged or not.  (But this isn't what you are talking about here.)

 

As far as the internet being able to find answers quickly, this is also because the internet is infinitely larger than any software program.  I'm personally okay with letting the internet do a separate job from Accordance.  I also like it if I can condense functionality into the fewest programs possible, but often this simply just isn't realistic or possible.  Sometimes you have to let separate resources serve separate functions. 

 

Quote

like this is searching for "Tuthmoses III", and finding no hits, but if I knew to search for "Thutmosis III"

 

I understand this completely.  That is why I have become a frequent user of wildcards (*) in the Research Tab.  It's not only good if you aren't sure how to spell something, but also because different writers / resources will spell the same word different ways.  Thus, I think the best solution is to learn to do compound searches like this:

 

"Tutmos*" <OR> "Thutmos*"

 

Or even,

 

(Tutmos* <OR> Thutmos*) <WITHIN 3 Words> ("III" <OR> 3)

 

Interestingly enough, here is a screenshot of what I get in my Research Tab when running the latter search.  Finally, I also recommend using the "Find on Page" (Ctrl+F) function to sift through results as a secondary search process after running the additional search.  (I just hope Accordance will kindly add to it the "Highlight All Matches" function so that it makes secondary searching even faster.)

Edited November 30, 2022 by TYA

[cweber]

What your after may be beyond the standard capability of database languages without using products with features like Ful-Text-Indexing. Because Accordance does not use these specific database products, options would be to purchase software libraries or third party solutions and integrate them; you wouldn't write them yourself. Work has been done in the generic and popular language Python for example with Natural Language Processing (NLP), but it would be a significant effort to provision regardless of the language used to develop Accordance.

 

 

[William Cross]

On 11/30/2022 at 3:25 AM, TYA said:

I understand this completely.  That is why I have become a frequent user of wildcards (*) in the Research Tab.  It's not only good if you aren't sure how to spell something, but also because different writers / resources will spell the same word different ways.  Thus, I think the best solution is to learn to do compound searches like this:

 

"Tutmos*" <OR> "Thutmos*"

 

Or even,

 

(Tutmos* <OR> Thutmos*) <WITHIN 3 Words> ("III" <OR> 3)

 

I appriciate this insight and would have gladly used the Wildcard option, but it assumes that I already knew there were two different spellings.

When I was first doing this search I was unaware of the historical variance on this name. In this case one would have to know both “Tutmos" and “Thutmos"

The Google search was so helpful because it taught me that there actually were two different ways to spell the name.

I would just love to learn these types of things from Research within my Accordance modules instead of Google.

 

This example is just one of many where it is not really possible to do Research within Accordance alone without knowing exactly what to search for (even using the wildcard).

Edited December 8, 2022 by William Cross

[William Cross]

Another instance of improving the Research Tab.

While reading a Tool in Accordance I came across the phrase "Sin’s consequences."

What a help it would be to enter that phrase in the Research Tab and have it intelligently compile the pertinent tools and articles in my Library relating to this topic, whether or not that exact phrase is contained in the work.