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Originally Posted by Caleb666
So how does it work now? If I create a custom Genres column, searching for tags won't look for genres, right?
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Assuming that 'tags' is the column name, then you are correct, searching for tags:X will only find values in the tags column. Searching for the naked term X will find it in all the columns you permit in search preferences.
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I'm working on organizing my collection now, and I have a few Russian books in there (fiction, humor), and on the one hand I'd like to file them under a few genres, but I'd also like to tag them as being in Russian!
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Why is this a problem?
The language of the book is not a genre, at least in the way that I define the term. The genre "Russian literature" does not specify the language of the book; all of my Russian literature is in English. I have books in French and in English, sometimes the same book in both languages.
I use a second column, language, to indicate the language of the book. For books I have in multiple languages, I have chosen to have two books in my library with different values in the language column.
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The problem with having tags separate from Genres is that if I use tags sparingly like that (but Genres religiously), then tags become just a bunch of special markers that don't represent my whole collection.
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I don't understand the issue. You would use tags for whatever you use them for. Why do the values not represent the entire collection?
The difficulty with 'tags' is that the term contains no information beyond being a set of labels/words that are applied to a book. Because of that, it becomes difficult to have subsets of labels that mean something as a group. Genre is one example. If I put genres in 'tags' along with other stuff, how to I get a list of all genres? How do I find books with no genre? How do I use them in templates? The same problem exists for other groups of labels with meaning. For example, I keep indications of where I got a book (what store or repository), what my rights are (physical, purchased, PD, free, etc), language, my priority (for reading), my wife's priority, and so on. The column name defines the group/category. I can easily search, subset, find missing values, find outlying values, etc. Putting all of these into 'tags' would be a disaster, at least from an information management perspective.