Create and Use Book Collections

 

Collections are individually created, customizable groups of books, which can be accessed and searched specifically in several places within Verbum.

Skip ahead to:

Create a new collection

Modify a collection

Search within a collection

Include a collection in a guide

Print or export

Save as a Verbum bibliography document

Delete a collection

 

Create a new collection

Open the Collections tool from the Tools menu (it is available in the Library section). This will open a new, unnamed, collection.

Here, you can do a number of things:

1. Give the new collection a title - If the name matches another collection title, a number such as “(2)” will be added to the end of the title
2. Select the Show in parallel books check box if you want the collection available in Parallel Book sets.

3. Use the Rule field to add specific items in your Library to the Collection - for example:

   1. type:commentary will add all of your commentaries to the collection
   2. type:commentary series:IVP will add all commentaries in the IVP series
   3. subject:marriage will add all books tagged with that subject
   4. mytag:Jesus-Life type:commentary will add all commentaries that you have tagged with the tag Jesus-Life 
   5. And with full query syntax being supported, you can use rules such as subject:theology AND author:augustine ANDNOT type:sermon
   

 

As you enter the rule, results will appear in the = Resulting Collection section. If you are happy with the resulting collection , you have successfully created it.

To refine the collection, you can:

1. Add a book that is not captured by the rule you’ve defined by opening your Library and dragging the desired book to the + Plus these books section
2. Remove an unwanted book from the collection by dragging it to the - Minus these books section

   

 

When new books are added to the Library, those that match the Rules of a particular collection will be automatically added to it. 

Note: Collections will only show books that are downloaded to your computer, so the filter rules only take those books into account when creating a Collection.

Modify a collection

To modify an existing Collection, click Open and choose a collection to modify.

 

After opening the Collection you can modify it in the same ways as described above

Entire collections can also be dragged into the + Plus (or - Minus) these books section:

1. Click Open to view your collections.

2. Drag the desired Collection from the drop-down menu to the appropriate section.

   

All books from that collection will then be added to or removed from the = Resulting Collection section.

 

Search within a collection

You can quickly and easily limit a search to a particular Collection by clicking the book selection button (Your Books in the image below), scrolling down to the Collections section, and selecting the Collection you want to search within.

 

Click here to learn more about searching.

 

Include a collection in a guide

After you've built a Collection, you can add it as a section in various Guides. So whether you're running a Passage Guide on John 14:6 or a Topic Guide keyed to "Kingdom of God," Verbum will search the entirety of the Collection you set for that search term.

 

To add a Collection to your selected Guide:

1. Click Add at the top of the Guide and then drag a Collections section to where you want it in the Guide.

   
2. Click the Settings dropdown and select the Collection you want to add to your Guide.

Note: You can add multiple Collections to your Guide by repeating the steps above.

Click here to learn more about using Guides in Verbum.

 

Print or export

1. Click the Collections more actions icon and then click Print/Export, or press Cmd+P (Mac) Ctrl+P (Windows).

   

2. Click the Print button to print the contents of the Collection, or select one of the Export options to send the details to a file.

   

 

Export Bibliography from Collection

From the Print/Export dialog, select the Bibliography only check box (1) and then select a Citation style from the dropdown (2), or proceed with the default style.

Note: You can choose your default citation style by clicking Tools > Utilities > Program Settings, and then scrolling through the available citation styles to find the one you prefer.         

Then click Print, or choose your desired Export option. These include BibTeX Style, Refer/BiblX Style, or RIS Style. The resulting  file formats can then be used to import the bibliographic information for the collection to the reference management software you prefer.

 

Save as a Verbum bibliography document

Click the Collections more actions icon and Click Save as Bibliography. This will save the bibliographic references for all items in your collection in the citation style of your choice in a Bibliography document.

 

You can access this document by opening the Documents menu and searching for the bibliography or selecting it from the list of documents that appears. 

  

Delete a collection

To delete a collection, you can open the More Actions Menu and select the Delete option.

 

Alternatively, click the Open button in the Collections Tool, scroll down to the Collection you want to delete, right-click and select the Delete option

 

Open the Collections Tool in Verbum