This article explains how prioritizing works and demonstrates how to set preferences for particular books.
Note: Although your book prioritization will impact your experience on the desktop, web, and mobile versions of Verbum, you can only manage your book prioritization in the Verbum desktop application.
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How Prioritizing Books Works
Prioritizing books allows you to access your preferred books first in different areas of Verbum (e.g. Top Bibles, Guides, pop-up menus within books, lookups, etc).
For example:
- You prefer a particular commentary series and want to see those books first when you use a Passage Guide.
- You prefer a particular dictionary or lexicon and want Verbum to open that book when you double-click a word.
- You want to set a preferred Bible version.
- You want to edit the Bibles that appear in the Top Bibles search.
Choosing What to Prioritize
Verbum prioritization is based on references or indices as opposed to page numbers. Therefore, you’ll get the most benefit by prioritizing books that are organized by headings other than page numbers (such as Bible reference, word/topic entry, devotional date, etc.).
You can see examples of this by looking at the reference bar in the panel containing the book. The first two panels show searchable index books, while the third panel shows a book that is only indexed by page number.
A helpful way to think about this is to ask yourself, “How would I look up information in this book?” You typically look up information in dictionaries by word or in commentaries by Bible reference, not by page number. Prioritizing books works best with reference works like Bibles, dictionaries, and commentaries. It is not intended to work with books like systematic theologies.
Prioritizing and Search Results
Prioritizing books does not affect results in the Search tool (such as Bible, Books, Morph, or Clause searches). The reason for this is that Verbum search results have their own sorting options.
Getting Started
- Right-click the Library icon
and select Open in a new tab or Open in a floating window.
- Open the Prioritize Books panel by opening the Library panel menu
and clicking Prioritize Books. This opens the pane as one of a set of tabs with the other providing information about any books you have selected.
- Select the book(s) you want to prioritize. (To select multiple books, hold Ctrl in Windows or Cmd in macOS and click the desired books.)
- Drag your book(s) from the Library to the prioritization list.
Note: You can also right-click your book(s) and click Prioritize this book (or Prioritize these books) to add them to the bottom of the prioritization list.
Tip: You may add additional titles to this list by dragging and dropping them into the panel. If a book is part of a series and you only want to add one volume, press and hold Ctrl (macOS and Windows) while you click and drag the book.
Note: To remove a title from the list, right-click the title and select Remove from this list.
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Drag your books within the panel to set your desired priority level.
Tip: It is helpful to keep titles of the same type together in this list (e.g. Bibles, commentaries, dictionaries, etc.).
- Verbum now displays, accesses, and opens books in the order that you have selected.
Prioritized Books in Action
Your preferred Bible, which is your highest prioritized Bible, appears whenever you hover your cursor over a biblical reference, or when you click one. In the example below, the highest prioritized Bible is the NIV.
Prioritizing Commentaries affects where they appear in Guides. The panel on the left shows a Passage Guide in which the Bible Speaks Today series is low in the prioritization list. The panel on the right shows the same Passage Guide after the series has been moved to the top of the list.
Prioritizing Lexicons affects which ones are used when you study a word (either from the Context Menu or by double-clicking it). This affects the order in which lexicons are shown in the context menu and in Guides.
Prioritizing Dictionaries similarly affects the order in which these books are used when you look up a word, as well as in the Dictionaries section of the Factbook.
Advanced prioritization
Advanced prioritization allows you to decide when and how to apply book prioritization. This enables you to limit the prioritization to a particular type of book, a range of biblical text, or by the book itself.
Applying advanced prioritization means you are restricting how often Verbum prioritizes a book. For this reason, you want to place these books higher on your list. This means that Verbum will check to see if the rules apply to open this book before it moves on to other priorities which will have broader parameters.
To apply advanced prioritization:
- Right-click a book in the Prioritize Books panel and select the option Set prioritization limits (advanced).
- This opens a menu below the book showing three additional ways to further prioritize this book:
- Of this type
- In this range
- From this book
- Use the dropdown menus to reveal options for prioritizing this book.
Prioritizing by type
Setting advanced prioritization by type allows you to prefer a book for particular types of uses.
For example:
You may want to use a particular lexicon only when you click a Strong’s number.
- From the drop-down menu, select Greek Strong’s Number.
- Now, whenever you click a Greek Strong’s number in Verbum, it opens the lexicon you prioritized. However, in all other situations, it uses the next prioritized lexicon.
Prioritizing by range
Setting advanced prioritization by range allows you to prefer a book for particular ranges of biblical text.
For example:
You may prefer to use a particular commentary series for Paul’s letters. Rather than add and prioritize each commentary individually, you can set a priority for the series.
- In the type box, select Bible. This tells Verbum what kind of search this applies to.
- In the range box, enter the range of Scripture you want to prioritize (e.g. Romans-Philemon).
- When you open a Passage Guide, Verbum prioritizes this series for any passage in Paul’s letters but not for other passages. For example:
Prioritizing by book
Setting advanced prioritization by book allows you to prefer a particular book for lookups within a specified book.
For example:
You prefer to use a different lexicon when working with the Septuagint than when you are studying Greek New Testament texts.
- In the type box, select Greek. This tells Verbum what kind of search this applies to.
- In the book box, enter the name of the book you wish to prioritize the lexicon for or scroll through the list to find the one you want.
- When you click a word in the specified book, Verbum uses the prioritized lexicon. For all other books, the next prioritized lexicon is used.
Remember: Because advanced prioritization is highly specific, such prioritizations should be higher in the list than more general ones of the same type.