Logos 4

PBB? What's it to me?

This is a repost of an entry I wrote for The Logos Blog.

The most anticipated tool for Logos Bible Software has been Personal Book Builder (PBB for short). Originally PBB was the tool created for Libronix (Logos version 3) so that users could create their own books. It had a few shortcomings in that it created resources that were not exactly like their Logos produced counterparts. But that model has changed. Logos Personal Books (PB) have all the functionality of any other resource produced by Logos except that it is produced by you.

What's it for?

If you've ever wished there was a way to bring all of your seminary papers, Excurses studies, position papers, even your graduating Thesis on, "Middle Eastern Soil samples and their impact on the Imago Dei " and whatever else you can imagine into Logos so that you could search it, reference it and use it along with all of the other thousands of resources Logos makes available; your answer is PBB.

How do I use it?

Using PBB is amazingly simple now.

I've mentioned that Logos 4 PBB is here! Now it's time to consider StillTruth's role in distributing them. At the moment I don't know what it will end up being, but I know there will be one. But I'm still a little uncertain what that role will fully entail.
Let's start with an update posted by Bob Pritchett the CEO of Logos Bible Software:

I just want to give a quick "heads up" about the PBB distribution terms. While you'll be able to build whatever you want with PBB, distribution will be supported via our Logos online systems. (Both from your personal page as well as from a central bookstore.)

The bookstore will make it easy to share content with others, and will offer the same cloud-based downloading, syncing, multi-computer use, etc. that Logos-created books support.

For this reason, though, Logos is going to have some content restrictions on the bookstore -- we aren't looking to create an editing tool, for example, that lets people create lower-quality and lower-price versions of public domain content we sell in high-quality editions, and then use our systems, servers, etc. to distribute them.

The policies and procedures aren't done, and we're still thinking through all the issues. But I want to point out early-on that the goal of PBB is to support "personal" use. This means you can do whatever you want for yourself, but if you want to use our systems to share/distribute the content, we'll be offering support for sharing your "personal" content, not for going into competition with Logos on public domain (or licensed non-PD) content.

-- Bob

Many of you who check this site, do so for one reason: Logos PBB's. That's cool, it's why I have them here, it's a ministry to the global church. One of the most hotly anticipated aspects of Logos 4 is PBB. So it's only fair to celebrate that fact.
Logos 4.3 which is currently downloading or will download to Logos 4 users around the globe has this newly minted Personal Book capability baked in for free.
What this means for you, is that all of those papers you wrote in seminary, your disertatation and yes your hand typed copy of The Treasury of David can now be imported into Logos.
The rules are simple, and this comes right out of the Logos 4 helpfile:

Compile personal or public domain works into Logos 4 resources.

Creating a personal book in Logos 4 is a two-step process. The first step is to compose the document in Word and save it as a .docx file. The second step is to build the resource from that file using the Personal Books tool in Logos 4.
IMPORTANT: The docx source files need to be preserved in order to make any future revisions, following the same two-step process.

I. Compose the source document.

1. Create the Word document(s) that you will use to build your Logos 4 resource. (See Personal Books Syntax if you want to add hyperlinks, milestones, headwords, etc. to your book.)
2. Save the document(s) to your hard drive in Office Open XML Format (.docx).

II. Add the .docx file(s) and build the Personal Book.

1. In Logos 4, click on the Tools menu and choose Personal Books.