Need tips for managing tags

[petzi]

I started to use Calibre two month ago. At first I had to overcome some obstacles related with the (for me) unusual interface, but soon I got excited about the software and the huge possibilities to manage books. Besides of my (small) library of eBooks I have just began to catalogue my huge library of "normal" books as well. Using the app ISBN Scan in conjunction with Evernote, the Book List plugin and an appropriate Regex I found a solution where I can catalogue bulks of books easily and fast. Maybe there are other, better ways, but I am happy so far.

But here is my problem: I noticed that after a short while many tags cluttered my libraries. Even after excluding them from importing as metadata during the search via ISBN and downloa I have the problem how to organise my libraries via tags. To have better control of the tags I now fill them in manually, but even so I get the feeling that they accumulate in a way where it is difficult to maintain a logic and consistent order. Also it takes a lot of time to control which tags I have already used and should therefore – if adequate – be used again.

I know that there are many options and some tools available (e.g. Quality Check, CALM) but for a newcomer all these different possibilities are overwhelming. What I am looking for is some sound strategy in relation of the organisation of tags. Should I accept in a first run whatever there is, brought up automatically with the metadata download – and clean up later? Should I put them in manually – book for book – (as I am doing it now), or are there some ways/strategies to do it faster?

I would like to learn how others – more experienced users – are using/compiling/adding their tags. What strategies do you follow? What procedures and tools do you use?

[theducks]

Constant vigilance

2 other things, also:

Manage Tags (Right-click on the Tags area in the tags Browser. Rou can rename and delete here. Naming to a already used name, consolidates those.
No: General, Fiction, Author or series names (these have their own field), saying Science Fiction in all the permutations , SF & F get broken out to the Single 9appropriate) Tag
<rant> why are publishers still tagging e-books like there would be PAPER cards for each in the middle of a Library Room???
</rant>
Set up filters in Preferences: Adding books to deal with some of the regulars

[fidvo]

Some people like to set up a dummy book with all the tags they intend to keep. That way, you can use it for reference after you've downloaded metadata to help you normalize your tags.

You might set up a field to identify which books you've already cleaned, i.e. set up the tags the way you want. If the default value means not cleaned, then any time you import books they'll be considered unclean. After you've confirmed the metadata is correct and made any changes, mark them as clean. It should then be easy enough to filter the books so only the "unclean" books show, so you can easily see which books you need to work on. I use a tag-like "Status" column to store multiple pieces of info so I can divide my tasks into categories such as checking the cover, cleaning the tags, or finding a good description for the comments, but if you don't want to be as manic as I am, you could use a simple yes/no column.

As theducks said, use the Tag Manager to automatically clean at least some of the tags. You'll still have to check them by hand after downloading metadata, but this can do a lot of the work for you.

[theducks]

Tag manager only gets rid or renames.
(rename: if the Tag was already assigned to the book, no foul, it appears only once)

As fidvo pointed out, the human is a necessary part of the decision

[Joanna]

My method is 100% manual. I have a set of tags used, pretty general ones: crime, thriller, romance etc., less than 20 in total. I do my best to use only those tags, unless I think adding a new tag is really necessary. From time to time, I may add some subgenres/subtopics, e.g. fantasy.witches, fantasy.dystopia etc., depending what kind of books I feel like I should separate into subcategories. If I'm not sure what the genre of a given book is, I find some information online, make a decision regarding the genre and enter it manually. I don't download tags but sometimes I do end up with lots of them if ebook files are tagged... then I leave what I find right and delete the rest. Oh, and in fact, I don't use the tags column for that but a custom column #genre.

For non-fiction, I have a whole custom column, with hierarchical categories of topics/areas (e.g. science.chemistry, science.biology, humanities.philosophy, linguistics.phonetics etc.).

For me, it works just fine, especially as I use those genres/categories more frequently to browse through an entire genre/category than to check what genre a given book represents. Therefore, the general approach fits my needs better than lots of very detailed tags.

[Barbara1955]

Tags are Silly. I erase ALL the tags. I came across a ebook the other day some one gave 60 Different Tags too... Really! Then another that the Only tag was eBook??? DUH like who wouldn't know they had an ebook.

[eschwartz]

I use only my custom tags that I select and assign personally. I ruthlessly delete all pre-existing tags and refuse to download new ones automatically.

Tags are there to help me sort through my stuff. The tags should mean something to me, rather than be the shotgun spray provided by random individuals paid to make up lists of tags to fit every situation.

[Joanna]

@eschwartz, my thoughts exactly! That's what I've tried to convey in my much-too-long post .

[BetterRed]

I follow similar principles as those outlined by Joanna and eschwartz. A minimal number of tags that I have defined. I also use fidvo's trick of creating dummy book(s) that have all tags. I don't use hierarchical tags in calibre, I might if I could use a predefined taxonomy, (controlled vocabulary) as I do with images.

I restrict my use of the Tags column to content classification. I also have a custom column called "Admin Tags". I never download tags or extract them from format files.

The Tags Editor is available in the Book List via Shift+F2 in a Tags cell, this also works for cells in other tag-like columns.

BR

[petzi]

Thanks a lot for so many helpful ideas to all of you!! It is good to know that there is no way without the manual/human part, that "Constant vigilance" (theducks) is essential. I prefer a similar strategy as outlined by Joanna, eschwartz and BetterRed: Not many tags and complete control about it.

In some of the posts, there are hints/ideas I did not understand:

@theducks
No: General, Fiction, Author or series names (these have their own field), saying Science Fiction in all the permutations , SF & F get broken out to the Single 9appropriate) Tag

I understand the part "No Author or series names (these have their own field)" but not the other parts of the sentence. I am not using "General" but I do use "Fiction"and "NonFiction". Wrong? And – maybe of my bad English – the end of the sentence I do not understand at all.

@fidvo, @BetterRed: I like the idea of a dummy book that have all the tags. But how do you work with it as a reference base? At the moment I am comparing my tags of a book with the tag browser, which is a bit cumbersome, as I must scroll up and down in the tag browser.

@BetterRed: The Tags Editor is available in the Book List via Shift+F2 in a Tags cell, this also works for cells in other tag-like columns.

I know about the small icon beside the tags field in the edit metadata window. But that's all I know. Do you mean with "Book List" the main view? (Indeed it would be helpful to have the tag editor in main window at hand.) But I couldn't reproduce this, neither with Shift+F2 nor otherwise. Could you give more details?

[theducks]

The use of Fiction is not wrong.

IMHO it is redundant in most cases A screen/file space waster.

Is this another holdover from the days of shelving paper books?

Fiction, Mystery It is a Mystery (The Fiction is Implied)
Non-Fiction, Mystery for those special cases that ARE NOT Fiction
eg The Disappearance of Dinosaurs

[chaley]

My view: I put any data I want to know about in custom columns, such as genre, purchasing rights (pbook, ebook, free), reading priority, reading order, read date, etc. I keep nothing in the tags column that has any personal meaning, instead treating it as hints about what other people think about the book. Whatever arrives there from metadata download is fine.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by chaley

My view: I put any data I want to know about in custom columns, such as genre, purchasing rights (pbook, ebook, free), reading priority, reading order, read date, etc. I keep nothing in the tags column that has any personal meaning, instead treating it as hints about what other people think about the book. Whatever arrives there from metadata download is fine.

Exactly.

I have a Usertags Column (which is also suppressed from the Jacket and content server).

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by petzi

@fidvo, @BetterRed: I like the idea of a dummy book that have all the tags. But how do you work with it as a reference base? At the moment I am comparing my tags of a book with the tag browser, which is a bit cumbersome, as I must scroll up and down in the tag browser.

I create an empty book (Ctrtl+Shift+E) with Author Iron Gloves. All my Virtual libraries have (authors:"=Iron Gloves") or at the start of their search expression. Its main purpose is to retain the VL even though it might otherwise be empty. I also load it with all the Tag values so that the drop down list always has all values - although shift/F2 (a fairly recent enhancement) obviates the need for that.

"Iron Gloves" was Rod Marsh's nickname, Rod was the Australian wicket keeper (cricket) some years ago.

Originally Posted by petzi

I know about the small icon beside the tags field in the edit metadata window. But that's all I know. Do you mean with "Book List" the main view? (Indeed it would be helpful to have the tag editor in main window at hand.) But I couldn't reproduce this, neither with Shift+F2 nor otherwise. Could you give more details?

Yes I refer to the list in the middle of main screen as the Book List, not sure if it has an 'official' name.

Can you hit F2 on a Title cell and get into edit mode? If not, then maybe that's why Shift/F2 doesn't work for you. AFAIK F2 and Shift+F2 should work by default.

The only way to make F2 and/or Shift F2 not work would be to assign them to something else in Keyboard Preferences. I can't see anything in Keyboard Shortcuts where the Book List usage of F2 and Shift+F2 is defined, so maybe they're hard coded.

If you didn't knowingly reassign F2 or Shift/F2, check to see if any of the installed optional plugins have hijacked them. If you look in the <calibre configuration directory>/shortcuts/main.json file for 'F2' that might give you a clue.

What operating system are you using? I use Windows, other OS keyboard behaviour may be different.

BR

[DaltonST]

@petzi:

What people do often is a function of the total size of their libraries, both individually and collectively, among the other variables people have alluded to.

Attached are examples of Tags from my huge English-language library. I also have 2 Spanish-language libraries. My English Tags were influenced by BISAC codes.

My main English library happens to also be a QuarantineAndScrub library, so I use Q&S to clean all of my books (including their tags, but the other metadata too) that I acquired prior to creating Q&S (which was the majority of them). I also use Q&S on new books in a transient Q&S library before moving them to my main library. 2 years after building Q&S, I am not yet finished with my backlog of legacy books needing attention. New ones go in clean, though.

For my Spanish libraries, I use CALM since the Tag tools in CALM are a port of the most bang-for-the-buck Tag tools in Q&S (I did not port the "minimize Tags using Priorities" tool, for example). I consolidate the 2 Spanish libraries in CALM, standardize their Tags in CALM, and then flush all of the finalized Tags back to their Source Libraries for a complete refresh.

I also use my Library Codes plug-in to extract (for Factual, anyway) the Dewey Decimal Codes and the Library of Congress Codes. From those codes I get the DDC 'genre' if it is available. Otherwise, I get the LCC 'genre' if it is available.
Collectively, DDC, LCC and the 'genres' derived from one of them are another "tag" of sorts.

If I had only a few thousand books, I would never have built Q&S or CALM.

With a huge number of books, a table-driven approach using Regular Expressions, substitutions, deletions, and other automated techniques was the most efficient approach for me to take. I built those tools for me, and just shared them to save a lot of people a lot of their lifespan cleaning book metadata. Life is too short.


Good luck.



DaltonST