Would like to borrow a tagging concept from SOMEbody!

Hi, Taggers – I joined LibraryThing in April, and jumped in with both feet. Have started 7 catalogs (mine, spouse and children) tagging away haphazardly with whatever thoughts crossed my mind at the time. My haste was to get all shelved books of all kids logged into LT, in order to give them their catalogs, along with their new gift books at Christ-mas time. I’m not done, but I’m not satisfied with my tagging job. I want to stop and regroup, before continuing, with a tag order that makes sense. I’ve tried browsing through different catalogs on LT, but seeing the tags entered with the different books doesn’t show the person’s whole tag hierarchy. Do any of you have your tag lists, or tagging order spelled out in your profiles {or know one who does? :^) }? If so, would you mind another Thingamabrarian borrowing your tagging concept?

Oh there's lots around. It depends on what you are trying to achieve with your tagging?

My system is just to keep series in order so its fairly limited.

There are a few systems detailing locations

There are non-fiction reference / catagory systems too.

I tag to keep series together and to flag significant exposition of ideas. I don't have a formal system, and often have to search through my tag list to see what tag I used for a concept ("did I use 'nanotech' or 'nanotechnology'?").

What is this tag hierarchy of which you speak? Or am i just denser than usual this morning?

I keep meaning to review my tagging... ... ... but currently I just try to ensure that I tag for type and genre, plus maybe location and a few other things that occur to me.

The trouble is, I usually enter books before I read them, so I have to remember to go back and update tags.

nautilus_library/4:

I think Tags is one of the things that LT does very well. Though, I think it could even be improved. I want to see some kind of order on my tag page, and trying to accomplish that yielded clunky prefix sorting. I would prefer additional functionality for the tag page - like bundles, or facets, or hierarchy, or categories... I offer this further reading on the subject. (Categorized under thread's main idea, showing the OP's topic title, and the link.):

~~~~~~~~ On Bundling Tags ~~~~~~~~
Tag Management -
http://www.librarything.com/talktopic.php?topic=17056
3: "Basically, a tag bundle is... a bundle of tags. I can group any of the tags I've used into non-exclusive* batches. It's not strictly hierarchical, because, again, it's non-exclusive, and I can look at a tag across all my bundles or indeed all of the site, but it allows a level of containment for people who want to use it as a hierarchy or for people who want to use certain tags that way."

Bundle tags -
http://www.librarything.com/talktopic.php?topic=2851
5: What del.icio.us does is allow you to bundle many tags together. I might have pervading themes within my library, and I might want many tags to sit together under that theme. The location example above is a good illustration of mhat I mean. Using del.icio.us, "home", "spare room", "on loan" might all be bundled together under the "location" bundle. Similarly, I could keep "roman", "greek", "latin" and "byzantium" together under a bundle called "ancients" or similar. It is a way of tagging tags, and helping one to organise them. I find it helps me be a bit more free in my tagging, as I know I can bundle-up any unbundled tags later just by looking at my list of unbundled tags."

and 8: "It is sort of hierarchical, except that a tab can be in more than one bundle. Just to be clear, I am suggesting functionality in one's personal view. I'm not sure whether sharing bundles with other users would really be useful, but for managing one's own categories and tags, I think it would be great."

Resolved: LibraryThing should have a "collections" feature. -
Tim's comment (7): "By the way, I'm not against "bundles" of tags. (Indeed, that's one reason why the tags feature is moving to the catalog page—so we can add functionality around it.)"
http://www.librarything.com/topic/15595#179771

~~~~~~~~ On Hierarchical Tags ~~~~~~~~
Tags Hierarchy (or sub category) -
http://www.librarything.com/talktopic.php?topic=10975
1: "a tag-hierarchy/category thing: most of my books belong to a sub-sub-sub-sub category that could be nicely put and represented in a tree."
Hierarchical Tag System? -
http://www.librarything.com/talktopic.php?topic=33527
Grouping Tags -
http://www.librarything.com/talktopic.php?topic=29978
Hierarchical tags -
http://www.librarything.com/topic/1180
Sub-tags? -
http://www.librarything.com/talktopic.php?topic=18939

~~~~~~~~ On Categorizing Tags ~~~~~~~~
Hierarchical tags -
http://www.librarything.com/talktopic.php?topic=5789
12: "it would be nice, say on the tags page, to pool the tags into categories. It wouldn't change the structure of tags, but instead would give me some flexibility for their use."
26: "the idea of being able to organize my tag page by groups that I define -- that is, ones that are useful to me. This would make it easier for me to find the tags I want when I am tagging."

~~~~~~~~ On Faceted Tags ~~~~~~~~
Tag Heirarchy -
http://www.librarything.com/talktopic.php?topic=41905
1: "would like to click on a tag, say 'fiction', and then see the tags that were listed with that tag, like 'historical', and then tags under historical, like 'American Revolution'. This way I could find tags under tags to narrow down my search for books about a particular subject."

~~~~~~~~ And other tag talk ~~~~~~~~
Tags associated with other tags -
http://www.librarything.com/talktopic.php?topic=39464

Tagging improvements -
http://www.librarything.com/talktopic.php?topic=3597
"Auto-tagging" - Take existing tags to tag your books -
http://www.librarything.com/topic/5371
Tagging improvements -
http://www.librarything.com/talktopic.php?topic=3597
Private tags -
http://www.librarything.com/talktopic.php?topic=3450

Also, many posts here about tag concepts, in addition to numerous other suggestions:
http://www.librarything.com/talktopic.php?topic=32873

Originally posted at:
http://www.librarything.com/topic/47204
tag ideas | RSI