Help me steal your library.......'s tag system.

[Blakestr]

Looking for a list of tags you use to organize your libraries - fewer is better but I have such a large range, I would love to get some recommendations about the tags you use. Have 1,000 tags was making me go crazy - but trying to condense them is also accomplishing that.

[maddz]

What cataloguing system are you using?

In Calibre, my ebooks are tagged by subgenre which form the basis of the shelves on my Kobo. These tags are replicated along with many more in my LibraryThing account, which has genre-based collections. I have some condition tags - Needs cover, Replace for scanned

In general, sub-genre tags will only appear in a single genre collection. These tags are then supplemented by descriptive tags: historical fiction (general, crime or fantasy) will get a time-period tag, or a geographic tag. Other tags I use are game system and setting for RPGs, I also need to tag rules and adventures. I don't bother with other tags in Calibre as tags aren't searchable on the Kobo.

[Blakestr]

That's part of my problem - the catalogue system is a complete mishmash - but if I have a good tag system with a logical framework, I can easily make some saved searches on Calibre. My main purpose is to make a few catalog books in Calibre that I can put on my kindle - then add these to a collection - so I might have a catalog that's just Fiction - SciFi & Fantasy , versus another Nonfiction - Pure Reference/How To

[DNSB]

Personally, I don't use tags or collections. On my Kobo's I use search by author and/or series to locate books. Given the majority of my 13,000 ebook collection is Science Fiction or Fantasy, using genre tags was no longer a viable option so I finally dropped all tags and the only collection is my Finished ebooks.

[maddz]

I think Kindle is the same as Kobo - there's no sub-collections, and no tags. So your Calibre tags will need to match your shelves/collections (or drive the shelves/collections).

My Calibre tags are either Genre or Sub-genre, collections or ebook management tags:

*Ebook management tags don't get transferred to the device, but others do.
*Collection tags will also have a Genre or Sub-genre tag, and the collection tag forms a shelf on the device. These are either books I need to prioritise reading or are length-based (when commuting I read short stories or anthologies as they neatly fit into my train journey).
*Genre tags get split into Sub-genre tags when there are more than around 300 books.

My suggestion would be to start by defining your collection in terms of genre - think of how a bookstore organises books. Keep the categories fairly broad to start with, then split large groupings into sub-genres. In terms of collections/shelves on your device, I would try and keep that number reasonably low - you don't want to page through multiple pages to get to the collection you want; I currently have around 50 shelves on my Kobo and I need to split out my SF collection into (more) sub-genres.

I can post my Calibre tag/shelf list if you like, but it's somewhat idiosyncratic.

[maddz]

If you're using Calibre, there are a number of plug-ins that are useful like the count pages plug-in. I use that to determine the length of the work which again determines certain tags. I'm not sure whether it works with Kindles.

Although I buy from Amazon, I read on a Kobo (I've never owned a Kindle); I do have Kindle collections but they are manually assigned within the Kindle apps on my iPhone or iPad (I don't bother with collections in K4Mac because I am using 1.17). Only about 1/3 of my ebooks come from Amazon, and I prefer to read on the Kobo. I only read on the app rarely.

[Blakestr]

Originally Posted by maddz

I think Kindle is the same as Kobo - there's no sub-collections, and no tags. So your Calibre tags will need to match your shelves/collections (or drive the shelves/collections).


I can post my Calibre tag/shelf list if you like, but it's somewhat idiosyncratic.

I'll take it - even if only 1/10 are useful, just seeing a decent framework executed would be helpful for me

[maddz]

Originally Posted by Blakestr

I'll take it - even if only 1/10 are useful, just seeing a decent framework executed would be helpful for me

Annoyingly, I can't attach the file to a PM but I can to a post (if I zip it - xls isn't a valid format).

Anyway, here you go. Any problems, let me know.

[ekbell]

I find hierarchical tagging to be very useful

My basic tagging system

fiction/nonfiction,
genres (using many hierarchical tags such as science.physics or sf.alternative history),
length [also hierarchical ex. length.short],
region.country (if important),
time period covered if the book has historical significance (ex History.Modern.20th Century.1900-1920.WWI -note the five levels of hierarchy ),
status of copyright (public domain or open access)

[theducks]

@Ekbell Why all the time period redundancies?
The dates show the Centuries Already, and will SORT in order if your entry style is consistent.
The relation to the current Era is easily seen (known). And as Jon mentioned on another post (Modern vs Historical), never needs adjustment later.
I think we can assume, folk needing that level of detail can figure 1942 is in the 20th Century without the tag

I also do a lot of *Assume*. Anything not Non-Fiction (tagged), is Fiction (no tag needed) Mean-Lean-DB Machine
Another reason for Lean. Passing books to devices USING tags nested that deep is a real PITA to deal with
My 2 cents. It is still YOUR Library

[DNSB]

Looking at @ekbell's post, hierarchical tags is one of the reasons that I stopped using tags. I used a tag hierarchy that went up to 7 levels deep and ended up being too cumbersome to maintain. I decided that spending my time reading rather than maintaining that hierarchy was the better choice for me.

[astrangerhere]

I tag all of the following:

Read/Unread
Fiction/Non-Fiction

For fiction - I have three tags - pre-1920 literature, post 1920 literature, popular fiction
For Non-Fiction - Science, History, Biography, Letters, Philosophy

Genre Tags

I only tag for Mystery, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Historical Fiction

Short Stories
Poetry
WWI, WWII, and LGBT (tags that might apply to any of the above)

[DuskyRose]

Mine has just over 300 tags. My rule is that each book gets one tag, and that's based on what the main genre is. I know, there's a ton of books that straddle the fence, but I go with that the genre the book mostly fits. Then I break that subject down, into groups that I'm interested in. For Scifi, my tag list looks like...

Scifi (which holds the general group that isn't any of the below.)
Scifi.AI
Scifi.Anth
Scifi.Apocalyptic
Scifi.Cyberpunk
Scifi.Dystopian
Scifi.Fant (For those Scifi that include magic)
Scifi.FirstCon (First Contact)
Scifi.Hard
Scifi.Horror
Scifi.LitRPG (where the gamers get trapped in their gaming worlds)
Scifi.Military
Scifi.SpaceOpera
Scifi.Tech (future stories, that deal with technical advancement, not so much space stuff)
Scifi.Thrill
Scifi.Time (Time travel)
Scifi.West (Firefly-like stories, loveable rogue outlaws with a Western vibe)
Scifi.Zombie

and each of those tags can be broken down into .Anth and/or .MM.
(Anthology and/ or lesbian or gay stories (as in fanfic's label of M/M)

I save all my books to the hard drive, in those files in epub format, and never touch anything in the Calibre library files. This way, if I want to sideload a bunch of books with a certain tag, they're already sorted by what I'm in the mood for.

The mysteries have even more sub-tags attached.

[ekbell]

Originally Posted by theducks

@Ekbell Why all the time period redundancies?
The dates show the Centuries Already, and will SORT in order if your entry style is consistent.
The relation to the current Era is easily seen (known). And as Jon mentioned on another post (Modern vs Historical), never needs adjustment later.
I think we can assume, folk needing that level of detail can figure 1942 is in the 20th Century without the tag

I also do a lot of *Assume*. Anything not Non-Fiction (tagged), is Fiction (no tag needed) Mean-Lean-DB Machine
Another reason for Lean. Passing books to devices USING tags nested that deep is a real PITA to deal with
My 2 cents. It is still YOUR Library

I found it easiest when initially sorting my books to throw them into four historical categories, then further sort those categories.
And sometimes I want to look at the broader categories (such as all my ancient history books or all my 20th century books) and sometimes I want to look at narrower categories. If I label things correctly I can do a search for 20th century and find all relevant books on my device even if it has flattened my tags.

I have a number of books containing both fiction and nonfiction so I tag for both.

[Tarana]

Who is the sorting for? You or family members? My tags are based on family preferences as I am the keeper of the e-library. I know basically what each family member likes which makes it easier to load their kindles. For instance, my sister only reads hard science while I don't care for dystopian themes. My Mom dislikes mystery cozies but likes crime, mystery and thrillers. Hope this gives you some ideas. I have roughly 6,000 ebooks (different sources) and it did take awhile to figure out how to sort through them. If it was just for me, I would just have the general categories with cozies and historical fiction bumped out into their own categories. Note: Anthology includes short stories, but I just know it's under anthology. Finally, don't waste a lot of time on categories that you could be spending reading. I do all my categorization while on hold making appointments and such.

Scifi - Hard Sci
Scifi - Humor
Scifi - Adventure
Scifi - Alt Hist
Scifi - Anthology
Scifi - Dystopian
Scifi - Doesn't fit in above categories
Fantasy - Humor
Fantasy - Anthology
Fantasy - Urban
Fantasy - Doesn't fit in above categories
Crime (detective & private investigator)
Thriller
Crime - Anthology
Mystery
Mystery Cozy
Historical Fiction
Horror
Nonfiction
History
Romance
Fiction (includes classics like Dickens as well as current like Life of Pi)
Humor