OrganizeTexts1 At the recent training seminar in Chicago, one of the attendees asked me to share my system of Library organization. I didn’t have an easy way to do it on the spot, but I did promise to get that to him “somehow.” On the assumption that others may find this helpful, “somehow” will be a series of blog posts on each major module category. You may find my system worthy of emulation, or you may decide it isn’t for you. Whichever is true, I hope this series will get you thinking about how best to organize your own Accordance library.

First, let’s open the Library. In Accordance 10, opening the Library panel is as simple as clicking the Library icon on the Toolbar. To filter your library so that it only shows the Texts, click the Texts button at the bottom of the Library panel.

As you can see from the screenshot at right, I’ve created three folders at the top of my texts containing all my tagged Greek New Testament, Hebrew Bible, and Greek Septuagint texts. I’ve also added a divider line between those folders and my most used English Bibles.

Because the way you organize your modules in the Library gets reflected in all the corresponding Text and Tool menus, I do not group my main English Bibles in a folder. By leaving them at the top level of my Texts listing, I can select them quickly from the menus without having to dig through a submenu.

OrganizeTexts2 Beneath my most used English Bibles, I have folders for lesser used Text modules. These include other English and modern translations, as well as other bodies of literature, such as our various original texts and translations of the Pseudepigrapha, Apocryphal Literature, Church Fathers, etc. By grouping these lesser used texts in folders at the bottom of my list of Texts, I can still easily find them in the various text menus, but I don’t have to scroll past them to get to my most used Bibles.

Well, that’s how I organize my Text modules. I hope this helps some of you think through your own system of organization. If you have a different system you’d like to share, feel free to do so in the comments on this post.