Tags vs. Collections

I'd love to know how other LT users think about using collections vs. tags. For example, I'd like to track the year I've read each book. I can create a 2013 collection or tag . . . it seems like I could use either to track my reading in any given year. e.g. one could make the argument that collections and tags are really the same thing, just two different names. Any thoughts about the pros or cons of either?
Thanks!

Yes, they are basically the same thing. The difference is that the UI for tags is optimized to allow a great many of them without problems while the UI for collections is optimized for a small number. Collections also haven't been added everywhere on the site yet. For example, when exporting your book data you still can't export the collection.

Yes you can - they were added to the TD export last year (finally). I'm not sure they show up on the mobile site, and there are other places, but they have gotten into exports.

As jjwilson says, you can have thousands of tags, but collections start getting unwieldy at around 20-30. It's easy to search for a tag within a collection (or across the whole catalog); you can't search for a collection as such, though you can display a single collection easily. You can also display the intersection of two collections, or the inverse of a collection (have you found that? It's under Stats/Memes>Collections from your home page or profile). You can search for two tags, but you'll get all books with either tag (and sometimes, all books with either word anywhere in the record).

There's lots of differences, but yeah, essentially, they're both ways of grouping books. If you're going to keep a reading record for more than a couple years, I'd go with a tag, just because of the number-of-collections issue, but it's up to you. It's also not hard, with Power Edit, to move all of a tag to a collection or vice versa.

I notice that some people use collections to indicate where a book is located in a study or library or house. I use "collection" as a broad theme for books that belong together (eg Travel and exploration, art history ) ..collections do become difficult to manage once there are too many but it takes some playing around with to work out what is optimal for you . tags on the other hand are descriptive labels to break down into subject areas what the book is about . (say an artist ... Picasso , or a theme as in Impressionism, or say French art) . one can add many tags and also see how others have tagged the particular book, which is very helpful.

True, yes, that's one of the differences - tags show up across the site, collections are single-library.

Ideally, collections would provide a filter on your LT library, whereas tags simply mark a set of books. Collections functionality is, to my mind, incomplete. But it does work to some extent.

First, selecting a collection is a simple matter of a drop-down menu. To select a tag you either have to search (but this may turn up extra results), go to your tag page first and then select the tag, or find the tag on one of your books and select it there.

Once you've selected a collection, you can see various views of your library for only that collection. So you can see what tags you have used on books in that collection, what authors are in that collection, and what series are in that collection. (The Melville Decimal and Lexile views are also filterable by collection for anyone who cares). These options are not available for tags.

In the statistics/memes section, the "Pages, Dimensions and Weight" page can be filtered by collection. I would dearly like this option for the rest of the statistics pages, perhaps someday.

Finally, collections can be used to manage the books included for calculation of your recommendations and similar libraries. Again, this is not an option for tags, although there is some tag-based post-filtering on the main recommendations page.

For me, tags are for adding keywords to books for the purposes of searching and for creating basic sets that I want to keep track of. Collections are for significant categories that I want to use in organizing my catalog.

Thank you for all the great answers . . . lots to think about. I have another LT account and had created collections by year. Because I haven't been able to get the TD export to work, I figured out that it actually didn't take too much time to assign a tag (e.g. 2012) to every book in a collection. I think I'll go with lots of tags and leave collections be for the time being.

Hi. When jjmcgaffey says in Post 3 "collections start getting unwieldy at around 20-30", does that mean that collections become cumbersome for users to manage when there are that many? Or does it mean that Library Thing has a really hard time dealing with such a large number of collections?

Thanks.

It seems to me that it has gotten better since they were first introduced. I'm back up to 18 active, and I had it down lower because of difficulties I had dealing with them. So either they work better now, OR I have gotten used to them, OR I now have an order I like and am not manipulating them as much. I don't really think it is the last as I just created a new one last week, and it was no hassle at all.

I use collections mostly to filter by ownership and reading status. Even my four 'subject' collections are also an indication of ownership, as I use similar tags, but the tags are also on books I/we don't own. I like being able to tell someone to look through my textiles collection to see if there is something they want to borrow. They may still search for the tag 'spinning' but if they stay in that collection, the book is mine, and at least theoretically on the shelf. Since I have 17 books entered, only 14 of which are mine, it could make a difference.

Part of the difference for long term members is that collections are a much more recent addition to LT.

I have a collection for the current year (so I can filter based on a tag for example - to find which books need reviews or what novels I had read and so on) which then get converted to a tag when years switch (for historical lookup purposes).

At least that is the idea - my old year-based tags kinda got changed by mistake while I was restructuring... :)

I usually have my catalogue ordered by reading date, which more or less has the same function.

Which would require me remembering to add reading dates :)

I mainly have collections for year read, and year acquired. I also have a few collections for major book buying trips, and for children's books. I also have unread, readable and to read (which to me are different things).

Thank you, and MarthaJeanne, that was very helpful. It's also helpful to know that for long-time Library Thing-ers, Collections are a 'newish' sort of feature. They may view them differently than me.

I am planning on 24 collections, LOTS of tags, and there should be several thousand books when I'm done. Is that too many collections for the system to work properly? I looked at the huge libraries (over 20,000 books) to see how those people did it and I found either lots of collections, few tags, or lots of tags, few collections.

Here's why I'm thinking it's smart to go with more collections: Say I want a dog story for teenagers. I want to be able to look at 'youth fiction' only, and then do a search of dogs. This will keep me from wading through the dog movies, the dog picture books, the nonfiction dog care book and so on.

So, I'm thinking 'youth fiction' is a collection. 'Dogs' is a tag.

Does that make sense, or would sorting do that just as well and it's just that I don't know how to sort with that much detail?

Thank you!

I just realized that my question in Post 14 sort of changes the OP's subject. Sorry. I'm going to copy my post and start it in a new question. Never mind. I did even better. I looked at libraries until I found one that has a similar setup to what I plan, and left a message asking that person if he has any problems with his large number of collections. :)

8> I mean that the UI gets less functional - though MarthaJeanne says it seems to be better now. I don't have that many collections so I don't have the problem. When collections were relatively new, there were people with lots of collections who
couldn't see all their collections on the drop-down list
couldn't move the collections within the list in Edit Collections - they wouldn't drop where the cursor was but somewhere else
had problems on the Profile page and the Home page with not all the collections showing, or not showing completely
And so on. Basically Tim thought of collections as something with a relatively small number of "buckets" and the user interface kind of stopped working when someone had a lot. It has improved; whether it's improved enough to be useful when you have a whole lot of collections - dunno, asking someone who does it the way you're thinking of makes a lot of sense.

I have 39 active collections and have almost no problems. I see all my collections in the drop-down lists (only problematic on my iPad or iPhone with a smaller screen and where scrolling and clicking are nearly the same thing). Sometimes the move bug still happens, but most of the time it does not. I see all my collections on my home and profile pages.

Dittoing divinenanny (with 50 active collections). Mind you, I almost exclusively use my desktop and I can imagine it might get trickier on smaller screens.

Thank you, jjmcgaffey, divinenanny, and BarkingMatt. I feel confident to start now! Thank you also, MarthaJeanne and Anniemod for your insights and ideas.

>18 Nicole_VanK: 50. Okay, now I don't feel so bad about the number I have :)

Although, every once in a while I still have a problem ordering all my collections (and sometimes when searching for something I sorta wish that I had fewer collections, maybe I'll try to figure something out with tags...)

ETA: Oops, and now I do have fewer collections. We'll see if this collection/tag mashup thing works/makes it easier and less unwieldy to find stuff).

I use collections to distinguish between books that I have in hard copy (actual, physical books) and electronic editions. For some volumes, I have both.

The references to the Statistics/Memes functionality is no longer operative. The Charts & Graphs tab will allow you to look at all your Collections (under the Books folder on the left menu).