Purists, help me understand collections

I can't seem to see what everyone else is seeing. When you have a group of books that you won't include in Your Library right now, how will collections make it better? Why do you not want them in Your Library currently, and how do collections, with the existence of an All Books collection, overcome that problem?

I don't know if it's even possible for anyone to explain, but I figure it doesn't hurt to ask.

It really depends on how the All Books is displayed.

My "wishlist" on Bookmooch is a set of books I want desperately (buylist) and books that look interesting at the right angle (watchlist). It would be nice to add the wishlist onto LibraryThing without inflating my library statistics, but I'm less likely to add the watchlist right away...

If All Books doesn't make the collections clear, then I'm not going to use LibraryThing for the watchlist.

I have a separate account for my wish list and to provide me with more anonymity than this account. This account is for my library. With collections I could make the wish list disjunct without going out of my home; I won't because I want the anonymity the other account provides.

I have some books I want listed in my library that come from a time of different interests, e.g. astrology. I may not want recommendations based on them.

I may be ashamed of some of the books in my library, e.g. astrology, and I may want to keep them out of the public eye.

To my chagrin, I have a couple of books lent to me. I may want to keep a record of them after I return them, for example to post a review of them. I could put them in either account in a separate collection. Or I could use a tag in my wish list account.

I think my wish list and books borrowed are the things that respond to your question.

Robert

Collections will allow me to separate books on my wishlist and read-but-unowned lists. This means I will be able to easily determine the total number of books I own while still having access to a complete list of books I have read and want to buy. Collections will enable me to exclude books on my wishlist from being used for recommendations and from my total count.

I really don't care if someone ELSE wants to look at my "all books" and see "oh, lorax has read those five books by that author, but only owns three" or "oh, she owns those four, and wants to buy the fifth". I probably won't actually use it that much myself -- I imagine I'll still spend most of my time in My Library. This seems to be where you differ from most other people; you require that people will have to look at two separate pages to get that information for your library (but, of course, unless you make your wishlist private they'll still be able to get it!)

Collections will allow you to separate categories that people find it useful or important to keep separate, like the books you own from the books you want, the books you took out of the library from the books you lost in the fire or the books you're reading now from the books you haven't touched since high school.

They will allow users to create their own collections—so that, for example, if a users really wants to keep their cookbooks separate, they can do that too.

Once grouped, you will be able to treat these books as a unit—looking at them as a group, searching across the group, etc. in a way that is more "solid" than tags or other mechanisms. Both you and others will be able to do this, and will--through collection names and, maybe, descriptions--appreciate the differenes between books.

Collections will be tied into features in various ways. Most simply, there will be--eventually--private collections, for that embarassing collection of Indian sex manuals. There will also be features to allow members to display books from various collections--eg., currently reading--to others on their profile, blog widgets, etc. They will allow you to add ALL your books to LibraryThing without mucking up this or that feature with irrelevant books. For example, members will be able to prevent their "wishlist" books from influencing their connections with other users--so that you don't share a book with someone when you don't have it and you haven't read it.

Finally, through the shared semantics of terms like "wish list," LibraryThing will present fun and interesting data about what members are wanting, reading, etc. Custom semantics may also take hold, such that LibraryThing member may decide to add books to their "desert island list" so other members can see the most popular desert-island books, etc.

I think that about does it. I'm going to go play miniature golf now, dammit.

I have two separate accounts, one for books I own and one for books I've read but don't own, or want to read. I'm a purist in that my primary account is only books I physically own. I don't want to mix the two, and didn't originally intend to do books I don't own, but the functionality of LT really worked for me and made me expand my horizons. With collections, I can combine the two.

For me, the reason to want an All Books (or catalog or database or whatever) list is that I'm concerned about books falling through the cracks. If I can see and browse through everything, then I can make decisions about what may need to be moved from collection to collection, or see if a collection should be created or deleted. Sometime I only see patterns when I look at the whole thing - like those pointillist paintings that look like nothing if you stand too close.

I don't really care about making any collections private, but I would expect that private collections would either not be included in All Books, or All Books would not be visible to others. I think the first option might be the most useful for lots of people. I don't know what would be easiest to code, but that will probably have an impact on the end result.

I do think it would be nice to be able to look at another member's All (public) Books, again because sometimes it helps me to see the big picture and then follow the patterns down to specific books.

LT has been an amazing resource for me, steering me to books I would have missed and interactions I wouldn't have thought of. I think collections in any form will help that, but personally I do want the All Books option, as it will be useful to my style of thinking.

edited for typos, durn it!

When you have a group of books that you won't include in Your Library right now, how will collections make it better? Why do you not want them in Your Library currently, and how do collections, with the existence of an All Books collection, overcome that problem?

Currently, all I have in my LT catalog are books I actually own. (And they're not even all in there, I got a little burned out after all the lit. and still have several dozen non-fiction, various topics, to enter.) I'm a librarian, and first thought about being a librarian when I was like 8 years old - almost 30 years ago. One of my posts on these collections threads strongly showed this bias: a library catalog is for books that the library actually owns. By keeping my catalog ONLY books I own, I can easily see: how many books I own, WHICH books I own, and when looking at a bunch by a specific author, which books I DON'T own.

Re: how many books I own: from day one on LT, I've had a problem with "Members have cataloged this many books!" It may be a purist thing, or a librarian thing, whatever, but knowing that so many of those are wish list and unowned books - I just don't want to add stuff I don't own and inflate the number even more. (Mostly I just don't think about it, it's not a big deal.) I like that at least the new Wish List collection won't be included in my totals or (I think) the site-wide "total books cataloged."

(I lied a little: I do have one ER book still in my catalog that I gave away. I don't write many reviews, but of course it's important to *retain* an ER review. If it weren't an ER book, I would have just taken it out of my catalog. I anticipate having a "Read but Unowned" collection, but expect mine will be fairly small.)

It WILL be convenient to have a Wish List in one place, instead of on Amazon, and a handful on BN.com, and more on Labyrinthbooks.com, and on lists of paper I keep in my purse!

I'm not bothered by having my Wish List and my "real" library (and unowned) showing together under "All Books" (I'd still like "All Your Things" or "EveryThing"!) as long as those others are not counted in the totals, and it's clear to whoever's looking that I don't really own them.

I don't think about Recommendations at all. I've got over 300 books in my house that I haven't read yet, and I'm obviously good at finding stuff I like on my own -- on Amazon, BN, Labyrinth Books, pieces of paper in my purse... Sorry so long, hope it helps a little!

One concrete thing is that books of a series that I own and books that I don't and have tagged @wishlist all show up with green checkmarks on the series page. I hope that Tim will change that to only use the checkmark for books in the Your Library collection, or perhaps that can be included in a per-collection option.

>5 timspalding: Once grouped, you will be able to treat these books as a unit—looking at them as a group, searching across the group, etc. in a way that is more "solid" than tags or other mechanisms.

Tim, once you're back from putt-putt, can you elaborate? I don't mean to hijack the thread, but I'm coming from the opposite perspective, and I'm curious as to what collections are going to do that my current tagging scheme can't (other than the privacy and member connections functions), and whether it's going to be worth the time to go through my library and put everything into its proper collection.

I put my books in LibraryThing because it's a very convenient way for me to see how certain books relate to me, and it lets me show all of those relationships to other people in my life.

I want collections because having very distinct "buckets" that I can separate one at a time will make it much easier to be clear about how different sets of books relate to me, especially when showing (parts of) my library to people who aren't on LT and don't necessarily know how tags work here, or don't know my library very well and might be confused by the different ways I use it.

I want an "all books" collection mostly for when I am doing work in my own library, so that I can correlate, re-organize, and alter book data of all kinds all in one place, without having to constantly be switching back and forth; things like making sure tags are consistent or updating CK for a whole series. Or, say - suppose I'm considering buying a book on bats. I'd want to know a) do I own one already; b) do I have a particular one I already wanted; c) did I read any I don't own, and what did I think of them? d) is there one I can claim from Mom's attic instead of buying one? and I'd rather not have to search four separate places to find out. But I still want those four types of books well-divided.

If I just use tags for these things, all the different kinds of relationships get all mixed together and there's no way to tell visitors to my library that *these* groupings are the ones with physical meaning, and these aren't. (Also, if we just use tags for these things, we'll still have to put up with three posts a week on RSI asking for wishlists and read-not-owned...)

If I don't have an "all books" bucket where I can stir them together and see what floats up, I might as well just use separate accounts, which would be about as convenient.

Well said, Melannen.

I'd want to know a) do I own one already; b) do I have a particular one I already wanted; c) did I read any I don't own, and what did I think of them? d) is there one I can claim from Mom's attic instead of buying one? and I'd rather not have to search four separate places to find out. But I still want those four types of books well-divided.

If I don't have an "all books" bucket where I can stir them together and see what floats up, I might as well just use separate accounts, which would be about as convenient.

Thanks for saying what's been on my mind much more eloquently than I've been able to.

To me the difference is all in the UI. Collections are major divisions that you can call up with one click while to do the same thing with tags you would have to type the name of the tag into the search box, select the tag drop-down, and click on the search button. A lot more clicks.

I think everyone here is basically on the same page I am. There's a distinction between tags and the more solid "buckets" of a collection. Most members' collection desires will be met.

When you get down to it, the difference between tags and collections is partly user-interface labelling, functionality steps and simple psychology--less what tags "can't" do and more what they're best at and what people will use them for. (One might as well ask why put walls in your house when sheets hanging form the ceiling would also separate areas?)

And it's partially the features that can be tied to collections—in positive ways or just, as jjwilson61 wrote, to stop adding a green check by books that are only on your wish list.

>113 lorax: to stop adding a green check by books that are only on your wish list

When you are looking at a series page, it would be nice to see - books that I have in "my library" (green check), books I have already added to my "wish list" (yellow question mark) from ones that I have done nothing too - otherwise I might add them to my wish-list again... (and one can make a weaker case for oher "not-my library" collections.... so my suggestion for extreme flexibility of collection properties is "choose icon to display for books in this collection when the work appears in lists .... hmm different icons for different lists contexts... different icons if you have the same "edition" or different editions... one could perhaps go too far in this direction)

Tim

I am what people seem to call a catalogue purist, I have only listed what is physically in my possession, not just books I have a connection to. I would like to be able to list all the books I've read, and be able to review/rate them and use them in recommendations, but I don't want to "pollute" my data to do so. Having separate collections will give a much clearer indication to me and to others of precisely what my library is and where each book stands than tags ever could.

Collections will provide a way of separating owned vs unowned (my most wanted feature) as well as letting me jot down books I am interested in (wishlist) without it looking like I own them.

All Books for me serves a (potential) useful purpose as a way to get an overview of my books. I can only speculate, but I imagine that looking at all books will allow me to see which collections each books is in, in a way that is unlikely to be possible when looking at 1 collection at a time. It would allow me to make sure that every book is in a collection and that they are in the right ones without haing to scroll through each collection and check. As everyone would be familiar with the attributes of All Books vs My Library and other collections, I am not concerned that anyone would think I am laying claim to books that aren't actually mine. It would be very easy for people to see what I own, what I have read, what I might be interested in etc without having to assume that I have read or own or agree with every book I've listed.

Thanks for all the responses! This is what I take from the discussion; feel free to correct or offer clarifications:

1. For most people, it's not really about separation for the sake of separation. The focus is mostly on separation for the sake of particular functions (excluding from book totals, excluding from recommendations, making it easier for non-members unfamiliar with tags, not having green checkmarks, etc.)
2. There do exist other people who care about separation in itself, but they assume that All Books will make the separation clear--not something I've really seen any evidence of--or are willing to accept whatever comes along and potentially not enter some of their books.
3. The one response I don't understand, which seems like the critical one for my purposes, is Helcura's in #6. Could you try to explain how you reconcile I don't want to mix the two with acceptance of the All Books collection for its utility? To me, the All Books collection seems like precisely the mixing that I wanted to avoid.

One might as well ask why put walls in your house when sheets hanging form the ceiling would also separate areas?

So I guess maybe it comes down to psychology. I just don't want sheets. I don't want to pull them down and see all the rooms of the house together. And I certainly don't want visitors to my house to do it. It's one thing for the kitchen, living room, and dining room, but I really think the bathroom needs solid walls.

> 16 _Zoe_
2. There do exist other people who care about separation in itself, but they assume that All Books will make the separation clear--not something I've really seen any evidence of--or are willing to accept whatever comes along and potentially not enter some of their books.

Just my take on this, the assumption that "All Books" will make the separation clear: I don't recall seeing evidence of this either, that when one member views "All Books," whether their own or someone else's, that view will explicitly indicate which collection(s) each of the "All Books" are in. But from my perspective, members who become familiar with the collections feature will understand that "All Books" has ALL the stuff that user has entered, and if there's a link close by that says "Wishlist," they can surmise that the member's "All Books" includes at least one thing that isn't "really" in their library. It should be easy enough to see a book in "All Books," then click to the other user's "Your Library" to see if it's ACTUALLY in their library or not.

When you are looking at a series page, it would be nice to see - books that I have in "my library" (green check), books I have already added to my "wish list" (yellow question mark) from ones that I have done nothing too - otherwise I might add them to my wish-list again

I think that's a good idea—color-coded check marks. Thanks!

People have already echoed (much more eloquently than I) my feelings on this, but I’ll add a bit of hard-headed perspective.

My library is a real, physical thing, not vaporware. As I add and purge, I need to see those changes that way. The checkmarks next to books in a series I’ve read only would annoy the hell out of me and make it more difficult to fill in the gaps in my library (yay for future color coding). I don’t use LT for recommendations much, but maybe I would if I could more accurately define what I want compared.

My library also demarks what I’m serious about. If I buy it and keep it, it means something and should be weighted as such. Those books I’ve borrowed or tossed should not be treated the same because they didn’t make enough of an impact for me to buy or retain. Having an accurate record of this flux in one place would be a help. Right now I’ve got a huge spreadsheet with books, authors and years read. If I think something sounds familiar, I can look it up there & see if I’ve read it and then find the review in one of my journals. That way I don’t buy or borrow the same book twice.

And I just plain don’t want to see make-believe in my catalog. I have enough to keep track of without having to remember whether I’ve only read something or whether I own it. Tags just don’t do it for me. Sorry, but there it is. Tags are only of value when they can tell me something about my collection, not stuff I can barely remember because I read it in the 80s or whatever. Those are interesting, but only as weird artifacts of my reading life. They tell a story, but they don’t tell me anything about my library and what I have access to every day.

Please don't construe this as bitching. I like LT the way it functions now. Collections or a way to define more clearly real books from vaporware would be a bonus.

And I just plain don’t want to see make-believe in my catalog....Collections or a way to define more clearly real books from vaporware would be a bonus.

Sorry to repeatedly ask the same question, but how do you reconcile not wanting to see make-believe in your catalogue with the existence of the All Books collection? Do you just not consider All Books your catalogue?

I'm not trying to refute your views, I'm just trying to understand how so many people are managing to take what seems to me an incomprehensible leap.

20>

I don't consider All Books (or whatever it might be called) my catalog. I consider it as a collection of collections--where all books that I've included in my database can be found. I consider Your Library (or whatever it might be called) to be my actual catalog.

>21 PhoenixTerran:

Agree.

Sorry to repeatedly ask the same question, but how do you reconcile not wanting to see make-believe in your catalogue with the existence of the All Books collection? Do you just not consider All Books your catalogue?

All books is NOT my library, it's just a list. Within that list there is a corral for my library and other corrals for stuff that I don't own. Make sense? Ideally, I'd like a tabbed system so I could see them as separate entities and so could everyone else, but I'm flexible.

21/23: Exactly.

>>16 _Zoe_: : I want walls, but I want walls with *doors* in them.

I am assuming that we'll be able to set a "default" collection for our library, and that anyone who wants to see another collection has to know enough about LT to understand how they work. So I can set my default as "my library" (which will be the same books that are currently in it) and assume that's what most people see.

Actually, since I forsee mostly using it for myself, I quite like the idea of making "All Books" invisible to everybody but the library's owner (or at least letting users choose). But as long as I can choose my own default collection, I don't think the existence of All Books is going to be that much of a big deal in terms of how people see libraries.

>20 _Zoe_: I really see All Books as My LT Database - everything I've entered in LT. I don't see it as a collection so much as a list of everything I've put in LT. I don't anticipate using it all the time, but it will be extremely helpful to me so that I can ensure I've dong my tagging correctly, put things in the right collection, etc. I've now run out of ways to describe why I want it and why I think it would be helpful to have. I hope someone can describe it better than I can.

BTW - I really hope there will be an option for a Collections column in one of the library views. That way I can sort and make sure things are in the correct place when I'm viewing My LT Database.

#1 _Zoe_

Collections... To me, what the collections does depends entirely on HOW you use LT.

My use is that LT is a tracking device for my physical books I have. As such, I have no books that I check from the library, or that I desire to own, listed within the confines. (I don't have the time to maintain multiple accounts to track other things.) Collections will allow me to bring in additional books that may not be physcally mine.

Collections will also allow me to remove certain tags from my catalog. To me tagging a book "Living Room" is not desireable. I want the tags to be just the book, not its physical location in my house.

Other collections may also allow removal of certain other tags. "To Be Read" is being discussed as a possible collection. My mind isn't sure if I'm going to use this tag as part of my LT structure or not.

This being said, we have people who use LT to track books that they've read. Doesn't matter if they own it or not. They will bring a different thought process to collections. Perhaps they will have physcial own books, library books, friend's books as their collections. Whether it is read or not won't factor into their collections structure.

Which I realize I may have muddied the waters, but this is a thought I wanted to offer this little insight for myself.

>25 melannen: I guess it depends how much knowledge the other users are assumed to have. It seems like there are going to be links to all of the collections at the top of the catalogue page (or at least, to all that fit); it doesn't really require much understanding of collections to click on "All Books".

I don't mind doors; people are welcome to go from my Library to my Wishlist (at least in theory--in reality I'm likely to lock the wishlist door for other reasons). But there's a hallway in between, and they're not straight across from each other. I don't want people to stand in between and try to look at both at once.

To further clarify (and because the post your collection idea thread is so cluttered). This is how I see collections in my head from an organizational POV.

All Books
- My Library (stuff in my house...owned)
- Read, but not owned (library books, stuff I've tossed etc)
- Watchlist (things I'm interested in, but haven't decided to buy)
- Shopping list (things I have decided to buy)

>>28 _Zoe_:: I do understand that; but I grew up without air conditioning; I want houses to have lots of breezeways and open spaces so I'm not dependent on fancy ventilation systems in order to have circulation. (...possibly this metaphor is beginning to wear out...)

I *really* don't like the proposed list-of-collections across the top, and if we can't at least get rid of the ones of those that we choose not to use, I will be screaming bloody murder, I promise you.

Sorry to repeatedly ask the same question, but how do you reconcile not wanting to see make-believe in your catalogue with the existence of the All Books collection? Do you just not consider All Books your catalogue?


Because we don't have to look at All Books if we don't want to.

I know you know that, and that your concern is with other people looking at your All Books; frankly, I don't care what other people look at in my catalog. If I did, it would be private. I think that may be the distinction that's being made here -- what we want for our own benefit vs. other people's.

OK, I'm not a purist, but I'm commenting anyway.

When I look at someone else's catalog, it's because I want to get an idea of what their interests are. I want to see everything they've cataloged: wishlist, unread, unowned, and standard read-and-owned. If I were ever to check your catalog, I would not want to have to check three or four different places to get an idea of what books you are interested in - if that were the case, I would likely say to myself, "the hell with it" and not look at all.

So yes, I think the All Books/Items collection is useful, necessary, and should not be eliminated from anyone's catalog. And for my own catalog, I also think All Items is necessary - if I'm checking out my "interactions" with an author, I want to see on a single screen which books I own, which I've read but not bought, and which I have marked as Wishlist or To Read. On ONE screen.

But I can certainly also think of situations where I only want to view my Wishlist, or the books I currently own. And it would be nice to get separate statistics for my husband's library or the library of children's books we have. Or a tag cloud for either of those, not intermingled with the tag cloud for the majority of my collection.

I like the stats, and I LOVE connections (intersections with other libraries), and to make the info on this meaningful, it is important to be able to keep my library (the way I define it--material stuff in my possession) separate from wishlist, watchlist, read-only-list... Of course, the stats on those are/will be interesting too--but I have to know what's what, apples away from oranges, zebras from giraffes...

But suppose I want to look at "fruit", or "quadrupeds", or "fruit + quadrupeds". I'm not saying I'll want to (I actually can't come up with any reason to, momentarily)--but suppose I want to--because it's there or whatever--then I'll need some all-encompassing category, whatever it's called.

I see it as "all the stuff in my apartment"--including the dustbunnies under the bed, the trash I'll take out, the borrowed gloves, the growing mint plant, the evaporating water in the glass--everything. There's no permanent reason to consider any of this together--but say I want to know the number of atoms of "everything" in the space enclosed by the walls at this time. The point isn't so much what are you going to do with this, but that someone, somewhere, may use it.

So, assuming I understood the concept of "all books", I doubt I'll have much (maybe ANY) use for that view, whether of mine or others' catalogues. Maybe if collections get separate tag clouds and tag mirrors, and I want to see the "global" one... Heck, I don't know.

But as for presentation to others (which I think is really Zoe's focus, rather than the existence of All Books as such), I don't see why we couldn't choose which combination of collections to show. Let's say the default is "All", with the option to choose any combination. Is this utterly impossible? I doubt this would seriously change the global presentation habits as they stand, Tim said few people bother to change the defaults.

Alternatively, would it be possible to indicate somehow in the "All Books" view the difference between wishlist and "actual" books? Say, a shading or paler font or something for the unowned books?

Finally, I realise this isn't much, Zoe, but FWIW--do you think a lot of people will choose "All Books" views for catalogues? I don't see it myself, so messy; but, what if then the "Your Library" view were the default, and people had to choose All Books etc.?

(sorry if the suggestions were rererehashed already...)

I guess I'm a purist in that I started out listing only books I own. Over the past 2 years, I have one book listed that came from the library (which I wanted to review), and several books that I once owned but have since given away to my public library (several of which had reviews).

Let me try to answer your questions:

"When you have a group of books that you won't include in Your Library right now, how will collections make it better?" Because I will be able to list books I don't own but have read, therefore expanding the list of my "intellectual universe as reflected on LT", allowing me to review books I don't own, and further sharpening recommendations based on a broader example of books I've read. Additionally, it will allow me to keep my wishlist on LT rather than on Goodreads.

"Why do you not want them in Your Library currently, . . ." Because I don't own them.

". . . and how do collections . . . overcome that problem? Because I can put unowned books and wishlist books into separate collections, therefore allowing me to have them on LT but also allowing me to keep owned and unowned books separate.

. . . with the existence of an All Books collection . . . Putting this clause into the previous sentence was a bit of a nonsequitor, so I separated it out. The Database/Catalog list will allow me to search by tag through separate collections. I plan to expand my tagging significantly once collections are introduced so that I can search through all my books (even wishlist if I so desire) to find interesting intersections. So, for example, "New York, marriage" might get me The Age of Innocence, The Great Gatsby, The Bell Jar, The Year of Magical Thinking and The Namesake. Two of these I own and are currently in My Library. Two I don't own but have read, so I do not currently have these listed on LT. One is on my wishlist. To find them all I would need to search All Books/My Database. But, if All Books wasn't available, I'd have to search three different collections. Plus, now that I've done it, I'm curious about the one on my wishlist - how does it reflect (or not) on the books I've already read? How will the works I've read illuminate the book on my wishlist?

Edited to insert missing words.

Finally, I realise this isn't much, Zoe, but FWIW--do you think a lot of people will choose "All Books" views for catalogues?

Yes, unfortunately I do. Timepiece explicitly said as much in the post just above yours: If I were ever to check your catalog, I would not want to have to check three or four different places to get an idea of what books you are interested in - if that were the case, I would likely say to myself, "the hell with it" and not look at all. Suddenly, my Library isn't good enough as a representation of my books. I don't think that this view is restricted to a small minority; I think there are a lot of people who would want to see as much as possible all at once, just because they can. As things stand now, it makes no sense to say that it's not worth looking at my Library because it doesn't provide an idea of what books I'm interested in--but once there's a bigger group to look at, my Library is suddenly too restricted to bother with.

>16 _Zoe_:

I expect that I'll think of Your Library as my "real" library, and put the books I own, and only the books I own, there. In that respect, they won't be mixed.

The All Books function, then would allow me to easily compare the books in my "real" library with the books in my wider world - books I've read, which exist in my mind (though I often don't remember titles, an advantage to putting them on LT), books I'm interested in reading.

To imagine a practical example, let's say I read a review of a book about a new discovery in neuropsychology. I go into All Books and I see that I've got a bunch of books on the neuropsychology, including the one in the review and several by the same author. I take a look at the books and see that I own or have wishlisted every other book by that author, and that I've read one other book on that new discover. I decided to buy the book, rather than to check it out from the library first.

If I wanted to do that now, I'd have to look between several different accounts, which is certainly doable, but not as easy, so sometimes I don't bother.

In a lot of ways, it sounds to me (and forgive me if I'm not understanding) as if what you want is for collections to be the equivalent of lots of different LT accounts. I already have Helcura for my physical library, Helcura-Reading for the books I'm reading, and I could add Helcura-Wishlisht, Helcura-Interesting, etc. Each of those would always be separate and it wouldn't be possible to look at them together.

What I hope collections will do is give me the functionality of having all those separate accounts, in that we'll be able to exclude accounts from some of the statistical info, recommendations, etc. and we'll be able to look at the those groups of books all by themselves, but we'll also be able to look at them all together.

For me the only unique benefit of collections is the ability to look at them all together. Without that, I'd just as soon make a lot of separate accounts, since it would give Tim and Company more money to run LT for me.

In a lot of ways, it sounds to me (and forgive me if I'm not understanding) as if what you want is for collections to be the equivalent of lots of different LT accounts.

Yes, that's exactly what I want. I just don't want to have to log in and out and search all the time. If I'm reading Talk or browsing recommendations with my main account and come across a book that sounds interesting, I want a convenient way to note it for future reference. I don't want to go to another account, search for that book, and add it there. That might work for one or two books, but I find that trying to do it for a lot of books at once quickly makes it not worth the effort.

If I can look at your wishlist (assuming these are not private) and I can see your library and your read but not owned individually, Then can I ask why you should care if I want to see them all in one place? I can understand not ever wanting to see them yourself but why is it a problem if others want to view it this way? Nowhere else does LT restrict how we see things only what we can see (privacy issues).

I am also assuming for clarity's sake that we can have a column showing which collections a book is in.

Which also brings up another thing. Now we are getting to the place where we are having more useful columns of data than we can display in all 5 of our views I think is it time to add a couple more (optional) columns, AND let us label each of the views so we can remember WHAT each one is.

I'm assuming that we can have a column showing which collections a book is in, but that it's not going to be a priority column for most people since there are already way too many valuable columns that can't fit in one display style. We absolutely need the ability to add more columns, but even then, I don't think the collections column is going to make it into everyone's displays.

Basically, I care how you see my books because I want to present them in a way that I consider meaningful and representative of me. I want my public face on LT to be what I choose it to be. Why isn't it a problem when people want to make some of their books private? To me, presenting "my" books in a random and meaningless way that blurs the distinctions between the books I care about and the books that looked interesting in passing is worse than owning a sex manual. Why is one concern considered valid and the other not?

39>Why is one concern considered valid and the other not?

I suspect part of the reason is that users can already manipulate the ways they view your library, whether you want them to or not, simply by changing the display settings on the catalog. Sure, you can set a suggested style, but you can't force others to use it at this point.

Yes, but I specifically put all those books together in that one collection. The books currently in my Library are intentionally together, regardless of how they're arranged. If I had another account for wishlist books and Tim merged it into this one without my agreement, I wouldn't be very happy.

41>I wouldn't be very happy.

Oh! Neither would I! :-)

I guess the closest I can come to that is, You are presenting yourself how you want, it is the viewers choice to take your view or choose their own. It is the same thing with the "_Zoe_ has a suggested style for viewing this library (use it)" link, you are offering Your point of view to look at your catalog but the viewer has the choice of using it or not. All of your collections will be there and I suspect most people will use the default "Your library" because that is the default and so few change them.

If you opened your house up for people to come and look at it, many hosts would have the bedroom out of bounds or a peek from the doorway, others would pull out the new thong to show guests. Left to their own devices most guests would wander around and do a little snooping, but some would go into your medicine cabinet unless you lock it or your underwear drawer. Whatever face we present to people they will stay take away their own impressions.

>41 _Zoe_: _Zoe_, if you made every other default collection besides "Your Library" private, wouldn't that enforce your desired view? Even if people choose "All Books", wouldn't they see the same books as in "Your Library"?

Left to their own devices most guests would wander around and do a little snooping, but some would go into your medicine cabinet unless you lock it or your underwear drawer. Whatever face we present to people they will stay take away their own impressions.

Yes, and there are a couple of obvious solutions to this: lock everything, or don't even let the guests in the house. I'll do that if necessary. But computers aren't like people; on LT, it actually would be possible to enforce the desired behaviour (i.e., hide the All Books collection) quite easily. So rather than having me bar the doors to guests, why not let me force them to be "well-behaved"? No one is going to benefit from my All Books collection either way.

>44 mkjones: Yeah, that would be effectively the same. It just doesn't seem like the best outcome.

Just for the record I don't care how others view my catalog, I just care how I view it, it's ease of use and intuitiveness for me.

I'm another used-to-be-a-purist - I had two accounts, one for books I owned and one for books I wanted, borrowed, got rid of...The last time Collections was imminent, I merged the two (and used tags to distinguish) (thank goodness, right after that the green plus went away!).

Right now I have a bunch of tags that start with @, all of which mean "I don't actually own this book". @Wishlist, @Borrowed:(person or library), @Discarded, etc. I can see all the books I own by doing a -@* search, but can keep reviews and read dates and the like. I can also track that I owned this book and got rid of it 'because...' - I've reviewed (I think) all my @Discardeds. Which is good because I have a strong tendency to cull and then rebuy.

The annoying things about doing it this way are all that LT thinks I own those books - series lists, recommendations, books you share, total books, etc.

So for me, collections are primarily for telling _LT_ information about the books I've listed. I understand my tags and can use them to distinguish between 'my' books and the rest. And I don't really care what other people think (this is where you and I differ, I think, Zoe). I came onto LT because I was (desperately) seeking a decent cataloging solution; I found an excellent one with the bonus of interesting people to talk to. But the social aspect is most definitely secondary to me. I'm always a bit surprised to get a comment on my library (one that isn't triggered by a Talk post). I do go glance at other people's libraries every once in a while, but it's not something I spend much time on.

For me, All Books is a tool - a database thing for looking at everything-I've-entered, rather than my Your Library. If it were private to the user (equivalent to the Home page), I'd be perfectly happy. If it could be set private, I'd be perfectly happy (wouldn't for myself, but then I wouldn't put books into a private collection either). If it's available but not default, I'd be perfectly happy - maybe other people would like to look at this tool too. If it were the default view, I'd be less happy - that's what I've got now, Collections is supposed to be better. But as a separate collection, no, it doesn't bother me - it's not really an aspect of my library to me, it's an LT tool.

I'm trying to stretch my mind around why you care who sees All Books, and it's hard. I can see you trying to stretch yours around why I don't, and it's obviously equally hard. Hope this helps.

>48 jjmcgaffey: Totally of topic, but I decided to sneak a peak at your tag structure and I just picked up Preserving Summer's Bounty: A Quick and Easy Guide to Freezing, Canning, Preserving, and Drying What You Grow. It's on your wishlist.

You have to get it - I was renewing it rather sneakily from the library for a while and it became a moral obligation for me to buy it. I love it!

=)

#48: For me, All Books is a tool - a database thing for looking at everything-I've-entered, rather than my Your Library. If it were private to the user (equivalent to the Home page), I'd be perfectly happy. If it could be set private, I'd be perfectly happy (wouldn't for myself, but then I wouldn't put books into a private collection either). If it's available but not default, I'd be perfectly happy

Exactly how I see it! For me it is a tool, to not have 'All Books' as a bucket would be like creating a database/spreadsheet that I could only look at in a filtered state. As to what form it takes, I don't mind. If there are particularly militant views on privacy or not etc. then, as long as I have the option to have my whole library public, what others do with theirs is entirely up to them so having the options there wouldn't bother me at all and having it as a default-private collection wouldn't bother me. I invisage using it as a central editing place, so I guess it wouldn't be the worst thing to have as the default view. For me, 'Your Library' is hopefully going to represent the books that I actually own so I would probably prefer that as default view but wouldn't lose sleep over it if it wasn't.

And I guess, in response to post #1, I would say that I'm interested in collections as a way to divide my library in a way that I find intuitive and easy to deal with. It will remove the need for basic genre tags like 'Fiction' or 'Non-Fiction' and enable me to use tags for more specific subject based information within each collection without it becoming unwieldly. I tag differently between different genres so at the moment I have long tags that are things like 'Fiction: English Classics' or 'Non-Fiction: History: Second World War'. Being able to set up collections for each of the main genres will help me subject-tag more efficiently. I use tags for status (i.e. read/in progress etc) but I would like to have the ability to have a wishlist - I don't use LT for hypotheticals right now purely because I want my library here to represent books which have been or are in my possession. Same goes for 'Unowned'. I'd like the ability to split this from my 'Your Library' numbers so that there is a collection that actually represents my physical library.

Privacy, exemption from recommendations, social links - this stuff is absolutely unimportant to me as I don't use my library as a social networking tool (love gossiping and debating on 'Talk' but think of that as something quite separate from my book listing). That's not to say that I don't understand that this kind of thing is important to others so as long as the options don't force privacy on me, I don't have a problem with it (even if I don't always exactly agree with the points that are made by the proponents of this side of collections).

Tim, two concerns:

*Will there be an easy import option for users to consolidate two (or, in my case, three) large/paid-in-full accounts? If yes, will such an import option import all of our data (including tags)?

*Can we purists count on LT accommodating us in the process of gifting spare paid-in-full accounts to the friends of our choice (e.g., renaming the accounts in question to the handle preferred by the recipient of the "new" paid-in-full account)?

52: Tim has already said there will be a way to combine accounts, somewhere among these threads. Not sure about the data end, but I would think so.

Don't know about the 2nd.

I do hope my thumbs-up come along, too. Though, I'm not counting on it.

We can do both. First priority will be getting it to work solidly, before we start removing and renaming accounts.

>55 timspalding: Excellent!

>55 timspalding:
I wasn't especially worried about account combining: after all, isn't there currently some method of having accounts combined? (Granted, this is the only one of my accounts that is paid. The others are small.)

That said, what does worry me is the idea that things would get dumped en masse into the "Your Library" collection. I'd rather see things just dumped into "All Books" and let the users decide which of their books belongs where. Isn't that better (and easier) than dumping into a collection and making people decide what doesn't belong in it?

>57 AnnaClaire:

No, all books won't be a collection, and the assumption is going to be that books are all in a collection. Without that, we'll need a "All books not in a collection" collection, and everyone will explode.

>58 timspalding: Implode. I will definitely implode.

>58 timspalding:
I didn't say All Books was a collection. I asked if you were still going to dump all books (note the absense of capital letters here) into something that is a collection.

Aah. Sorry. Yes.

>61 timspalding:
As in, I will actually have to opt out of a collection? (And why's that better than opting in?)

Because all the books that have currently been entered have been entered in Your Library. Most people would not be very pleased if they suddenly had to put them all back in Your Library.

So, I think every book will have to be in a collection. If that's no true, then we'll need not only "All Books" but "All books not in a collection," because books will "fall through the cracks."

>63 _Zoe_:

That too, to some extent. The terminology agreement between "Your Library" the current tab and the future collection shouldn't be pressed. They aren't the same thing. They're two attempts to snatch decent terms from the sea of possibilities. But yes, I think users will want to have most of their books in this, default colleciton.

>64 timspalding:

I wouldn't think so. Wouldn't that be the justification for "All Books"? A means to access any books not in a collection?

66: Then there'll be whining about "how do I find books not in a collection?"

Right. You have 3,000 books. 2,999 are in a collection. Keep scrolling until you find that one...

67, 68

Well, OK, I can see that point.

To pull something in from another thread, if Collections were a sortable column in All Books then you could sort on that twice and get all the books not in collections at the top. That said, I think it is reasonable for all the current books to get dumped into the Your Books collection (except of course the ones that can be identified by a tag as belonging to one of the default collections like Wishlist).

Yeah, sorting for absence is one of those concepts that makes perfect sense to us, but not to everyone.

T

71: Far easier to say a book has to be in a collection, even if it's a "stuff that doesn't any name ever" collection.

Far, far easier to say "every book has to be in a collection, even if it's 'Miscellaneous'" than to court classic paradoxes.

It's the Junk Drawer, of course (and how did we get this far into collections talk without one?)

And shouldn't "Junk Drawer" be a default? :)

If ever there was a default, it's that.

Will it be possible for us to set our own default collection for books to be added to? Eg. someone could opt for all new books to be added to "Your Library" by default, someone else could opt to have all new books added to "Read" etc. If I have problems assigning collections to every book immediately, I plan to start an "Uncollected" collection (yes, I realise the paradox) for books I wish to assign proper collections to later.

I like that idea.

Hee. Uncollected. Excellent idea.

I thought we were talking about the group to dump all current books into when Collections comes on line, not the on-going default. For the on-going default the plan was to have a series of checkboxes on the Add Books page so you can check whichever collections you want. There was a rather long thread about it.

True, but when I'm adding a huge pile of books, I don't always edit them, add tags etc till after I've added everything. Some of the books I won't be able to tag or choose a collection for until I've read them, sometimes I'm adding a book on the fly and don't have time to do all the details. Being able to have all newly added books drop into a default "Uncollected" collection will help me find and sort those books until I have time to do it properly.

"Uncollected" is not a bad place to dump current books -- if we're getting a "bulk collect" feature (which sounds interesting on its own, mind you).

This is getting way too finicky. The goal should be to get the books in the collection that they're most likely to stay in from the start. The vast majority of people are not going to bother moving their books from whatever collection they happen to be in, so they should start out in what's considered the "main" view.

>83 _Zoe_: Yep, I agree.

An "Uncollected" "collection" sounds like a good idea for dreamlikecheese, and others who may not be immediately sure which collection(s) to use, when adding new books to an existing catalog. But I wouldn't think it would be among the Default Collections, as defined in the lengthy Talk thread on that topic. Dreamlikecheese does specify "newly added books" in # 81, and the use of the word "default" there, to me, doesn't imply it should be a Default for everyone.

It makes sense to me that whatever is in our current "Your Library" (minus books with specific tags like "wishlist" and others as determined by TPTB) will be dumped into the new "Your Library" when the feature goes live - as _Zoe_ says, the "main view."

I really have been shamelessly throwing around the term "default". Just to be clear, I don't mean that I want a default "Uncollected" collection which everyone has. It is a collection which is only of use to some people, and it's a collection that I anticipate setting up myself. HeathMochaFrost was correct in pointing out that I am referring to newly added books ie. books which we add to our library after the initial chaos that will be implementing collections. I was merely discussing what would be a useful feature for me and inquiring about how the system would work. I hope that's cleared up any confusion.

Am I the ONLY one who sees the paradox of having an "Uncollected" collection?

If it's in a collection, it can't be "Uncollected", now can it? So it can't be in the "Uncollected" collection. But then it's not in a collection....

Have a Miscellaneous, or a Junk drawer, or whatever. But every geeky fiber of my being rebels against calling this admittedly useful concept "Uncollected".

No. I believe I mentioned the paradox the first time I posted....yep, post #77. Actually, I kind of like the paradox. But everyone will obviously name it what they want...if they even want a collection like this.

You're all so good about editing right away! I tend to just add stuff so I won't forget about it (mostly TBR, not stuff I own) without any tags or editing. Then a few days/weeks later, I sort my catalog by entry date, and go down the list tagging and editing until I've hit the stuff that's already done.

89>

That's a big clarification for me -- not about your catalog specifically, but the idea that some people use "tbr" as "wishlist", rather than "books I have on my shelves but haven't read yet". I was impressed by the size of some people's unread piles!

>90 lorax: And then there are the people who really do own 600+ books that they haven't read....

#91 ... I'm one of them!

>92 klarusu:

You guys have amazing discipline - the first thing I do after I buy a book is read it, even if it means I stay up to late and have to go to work late in the morning.

You mean you only buy what you can read the same evening? That's what I call discipline!

91: I'm sure I do.

Ummm, yeah, I generally read books in one sitting. Also, I usually do major book shopping on the weekend, so I have a bit more time to read multiple books.

I also don't buy everything I read. I go to the library twice a week, and those books do sometimes sit for a few days before I read everything.

Still, I find it very difficult to have an unread book lying around. I suspect I'm an addict . . . :-)

No, we have no discipline when it comes to buying books in bulk!

#96, also an addict but too many come into my home at once to ever keep up! Work days I often get 2/3 Mooches a day in the happy post slot! Plus, I just can't read things like Middlemarch and Bleak House in a day ;) .... sorry, thread hijack over!

Addiction takes many forms. When I get near a good source of books I have to stock up. I'm feeling very disciiplined right now. My stack of books I have bought but not read is only about 60.

97: Exactly! Let alone mooching in bulk!

Helcura, clearly you have never gone to a buy-the-box used book sale and come home with 80 new books in one day...

Or inherited a large collection...

Or get set free every Christmas on your bibliophile aunts' and uncles' piles of unwanted books..

Or live in the same county as BookThing, which is a huge warehouse of take-all-you-want books!

I only have 2046 marked unread in my library! And yes, I do own them all.

>90 lorax:, lorax

Actually, TBR and wishlist are distinct for me. Wishlist is books I want to own (often authors I'm already familiar with), and TBR is books I want to read and then may want to own. If you look at my tag (which is actually @to-read), some are tagged @to-borrow, and some also tagged @on-hold-at-library (for those actually in the library catalog that I'm just waiting for - tagged so I don't keep checking for them). Lacking those tags, they are in my possession and waiting to be read.

I suppose you could call some of my @to-read books "watchlist" as distinct from "wishlist".

But I still highly recommend the sort by Entry Date for catching up on your tagging/editing!

102: Yeah, I use the idea of watchlist instead.

I think using tbr as that is likely to be confused with other people's to-be-read in their possession, but your concept makes sense.

102>

What 103 said.

I interpreted "tbr" as congruent with my "unread", which is the 70 or so books physically in my possession that I haven't read yet. (Not very many, I know. The used bookstores around here suck.)

104: Join bookmooch! *bounces*

I don't like the idea of TBR because for me I use it to mean 'To Be Reviewed' not read so it would be confusing!

And my tags would not work well for sorting, since I include punctuation at the beginning of my status tags.

Tim, will we have a "bulk collect" option? Will I have to shoot off an e-mail to you asking you to do a "bulk collect" for such-and-such a funny tag? Am I stuck manually collecting my nearly 140 unread books and 60+ books-in-storage?

Edited to add: Even accounting for unread books in storage, I still have over 180 books that would have to be sorted. At my present book count (and I am making a concerted effort to keep new acquisitions to a bare minimum), this amounts to over 40% of my books that would need to be placed in collections manually, should there be no way to place sections of my library into collections en masse. This is nuts when I use this tag for all my unread books and this tag for books I know I own but that are in storage.

105>

I've looked at Bookmooch, but I'm not interested for a number of reasons. (First off, I'd have to get rid of books. Without a good library booksale to stock up on 25-cent books, this is not sustainable -- instead of just ordering the book I want from Powell's or another online used bookstore, I have to order one I don't want, get it shipped, pay to ship it out, and then get one I want? This is less than efficient. )

108: Any Goodwill stores near you? Or used bookstores which have cheap books that you don't care about? Or garage sales you could wander by?

>107 AnnaClaire:

Yeah, I'm working to make the tag-editing functionality work for collections, so you can take a tag and throw all its contents into a collection, and tag everything in a collection, etc.

Coming late to this concept/conversation, and not yet having read (or found) the other threads on collections, I have a question. Although I've had a LT account for 3 years, I only really started entering books last spring so I could use a widget to display books I own on my blog. Some stuff I own I don't want showing up on my blog, and therefore it's not in my catalog. Some stuff I own which is cataloged (eg modern cookbooks) I don't need showing up on my blog either, as I mostly wanted to show off my Welsh/history books there... do I correctly deduce that by making some of my collections (eg cookbooks, modern fiction) private I can keep them from showing up on my blog? That would be great ;-) It would of course be even better if I could just pick which collection/s the blog thing displays...

gwernin, I expect you'll be able to do that when collections are done, but the better solution for your particular purpose might be to make a blog widget now based on a particular tag rather than the whole catalog -- your "wales" tag looks like a good candidate, given your library. That way you don't have to make your cookbooks private for other purposes unless you want to.

109>

What part of "the used bookstores around here suck" did you not understand?

Look, I'm not interested in Bookmooch. Clearly you're a big fan, but right now you're as annoying as any proselytizer trying to convert someone.

Thanks for the sugestion, sabreuse, and I may look into it. Unfortunately there's no single tag in my catalog for what I want to display (in effect, most books dealing with some topic in Europe before about 1500 CE, plus Welsh language references, plus ... you get the picture :) Whereas stuff left out would be modern (but not medieval) cookbooks, 18th/19th/20th century fiction (but not pre-1500 historical fiction), sf, fantasy (but not Arthurian fantasy)... maybe I need a "blog" tag, but adding it retrospectively would be a lot of work.

Will we be able to have a book in more than one collection? I'd like to set up reading lists, and some titles would fall on more than one list.

> 114 gwernin - We WILL be able to put each book in more than one collection. :-)

It's gonna be so much fun, I hope they release it soon!

114> Tags are really the solution that you are looking for. Do you know about power edit which allows you to select a bunch of books and add tags to them all at once?

116> power edit: Yes, I've used it a bit. May have to take that approach. As I continue to catalog all the odds and ends around the house the history/language aspect on the blog is getting diluted with other stuff.

LibraryThing is addictive, and it sounds like collections will make it more so ;-)

Here's another question for Tim:

When the 'who has the most books by an author' feature is reinstated on Author Pages (presumably after Collections has been implemented) will said feature be limited to calculations based on the standing "Library" collection within each user's overall catalog?

Being an, ahem, purist, I think that would be the proper way to do it...

And what about Members With Your Books? I'd certainly hope that would be based on the books in the Library collection.

I agree that I would feel most connected and probably have the most to talk about with a person who actually owned the same books as me. There is also the fact that it's the most person with a particular book, not the person who has read the most books. Maybe we could have another category for the most reads.

#120> This would suggest that people have to change how they use their library.

I don't think you will be able to make such a distinction.

I agree and that is the downfall of usefullness that they bring by the inacuracy.

You will be able to say that another person's Your Library books will be the ones they most connect with, whether they own them or not.

I disagree.

I'm with Bookmarque on this one, in that when I see "Your Library", I think of books I own.

But Tim is pushing the idea of a mental library that contains all the books that you ever read and for Tim at least, that will be what his Your Library contains.

I think Tim has said that the name may be changed. But he's not going to force everyone to use their "main collection of books" the same way.

126>

All of them? Really? Including all the books he read when he was five?

He has a better memory than I do.

>128 lorax:
Continuing your train of thought for the benifit of the powers that be, would I really have a "connection" to each and every book that was assigned to me in the second grade? Would you still say I have that connection if I told that I did second grade two decades ago?

>129 AnnaClaire:
I suppose it depends on the book. I can still clearly recall the phonics book my father used to teach me to read when I was in kindergarten. That book has influenced my interest in educational methods and my opinions on the necessity for different methods for teaching reading to native speakers and to non-native speakers.

I imagine Tim would consider that book an appropriate inclusion. I, on the other hand, might list it in a collection, but I won't be putting it in Your Library, because I don't own it.

For me All Books would serve the purpose Tim uses Your Library for, to see the constellation of books that have influenced me, consciously or unconsciously, throughout my lifetime.

LT seems flexible enough to handle quite a variety of uses. I expect there will be a shake down period as we find out what catalogs people choose to have included in recommendations etc., though.

Coming back to what I've always said about collections, I think it should be entirely up to the user to say what books they have what sort of connection with. If Tim thinks he has a connection with books he read in Grade 2, that's fine; let him include them. If you don't think you have a connection with the books you read in Grade 2, that's equally fine; no one is forcing you to include them. It's when you start judging whether other people have a sufficient connection to their books that I have a problem with it.

These posts about "connections" and "members with your books" is sounding too familiar. I found some discussion in this thread:
http://www.librarything.com/talktopic.php?topic=43372

And if you scroll down to message # 362, Tim says there (responding to the posted question):

Oh, another thought about the situation where you know someone has a particular book and want to see which of their collections it's in: won't it be possible to do this via the members section of the work page?

I'm thinking that showing up there is like showing up on someone's "users with your books" list. I think we can agree that most users will not want to show up as sharing 10 books with someone when either user has them entirely on wish list. (I can see a special "who shares your wishes?" feature, but LT keeps track of one primary shared books list, and wishlists should not, I think, be on that.)

So, I'm thinking each collection has a checkbox like "use for connections" that controls whether it shows up in member-to-member connections and also on work-to-member connections.

On the other hand, it might be good to see that although only ten members "have" book X, another five have it on their wishlist.

(HMF again) I don't know that "who has the most books by Author X" has specifically been mentioned before message 118 here, but as far as what to include in Connections and Members with Your Books, there's been some discussion about how those will be handled, and as the post from the other topic shows, Tim is thinking about it, and has mentioned the possibility of having check boxes or something where a user can say, "Don't include this collection in my Connections," etc.

After that, though, when Chris posted the collections-editing UI, it didn't include a "use for connections" option--just "use for recommendations".

>133 _Zoe_: We haven't decided on the checkboxes.

Hi! Have collections slipped again? What's the status? :)

Mike

Wow, I finally understood what the collections feature MEANS thanks to this thread!!! :-)

Good! Here's hoping it's just in time for the rollout... :D

I'm kind of holding back doing my spring cleaning until I find out what collections has in store for us.

It had a semi-promised date, but since this is the coding world, I've been holding them to no thoughts of making said date.

Though it might be good to know what's going on.

>138 gilroy:
You might want to check out this collections-related thread.
http://www.librarything.com/topic/57758