Collections: What new collections have you created? / Theory of Collections

I did a thread like this a long time ago pre-Collections.

Have you created any new collections beyond the defaults? / Do you plan to create some?

How are you using collections?

I have two non-default Collections:

"Didn't like", a subset of My Library to exclude from recommendations and connections, and to make it obvious that these books shouldn't be taken as representative, and

"Jane's", for the subset of my wife's books that I've entered into LT. Those were already tagged, and now they're redundantly-separated.

I may create a "Phantoms" collection to account for things like omnibus volumes, or individual books where I own the omnibus, to keep them from cluttering up my recommendations, but I haven't decided yet.

Generally I plan to stick fairly closely to the LT philosophy of collections as being "more separate" than tags, rather than just reconstructing a subject-tagging system.

Kicked to the Curb (stuff I jettisoned)
Childhood books (those I can recall)

I'm sure there will be more, but that's it so far. RNO will keep me busy for a LONG time.

I was pretty content with my tagging scheme for organizations, so I'm basically only making collections for things for which I would conceivably want to see a list of, but which don't have a single tag.

For example, I have a "Books I have read" collection which takes into account my "listened" and my "read" tags, and a "Books I can lend you" collection which takes into account my own-home, own-work, own-parents, etc. tags. On the other hand, I can't imagine regularly needing a list of just the books I've borrowed from the library/friends, so I've disabled "read but not owned" - I've got a "not owned" tag for that, anyways.

Also, because I am one of the devious heathens who catalogs my DVDs, I put my DVDs into their own collection, and removed them from my library. I like having the information cataloged (how else will I remember which seasons of the Simpsons I have?), but I'm tired of seeing my only member connections be other devious heathens.

Mooched out - no longer in my possession (mostly gone via BookMooch)

Mare's - my partner's books (this will probably be altered to reflect only those books of hers that I haven't read or don't intend to read, so I can adjust recommendations to not incorporate those titles)

FolioFiles covers - hi res covers for use on my blog header widget (until I have the time to upload replacements for the muddy, pixelated defaults)

Incomplete series - pretty self-explanatory

Reference - pretty much anything I don't intend to read cover to cover; books that are "used" rather than "read"

At the moment (and I'm certain this will evolve more), I have:

Fiction (3467)
Nonfiction (15)
Classics (818) - this is mostly some ebook collections acquired so I *have** the stuff, mostly unread and likely to remain so for a long time
Nowhere (Cleanup) (172) - Stuff that needs to be looked at for varuious reasons
Currently reading (23)
Paper books (1520)
Ebooks (1734)
Your library (3467)
Wishlist (41)
To read (17)
Read but unowned (0)
Favorites (0)
All collections (3467)

I haven't had much time to play yet, but I temporarily have everything but wishlist stuff and stuff from the library in an 'Uncollected' collection. That way I'll know what books I've looked at and what I haven't. I'll delete it once I move everything out of there.

I'm actually removing all my tags other than where they are in my home. I find collections much more in line with my preferences. For me, much of tags is noise.

So, mine so far:

Read in 200# (2006, 2007, etc.)
MrMorphy's (hubby's books)
Science fiction/fantasy
Romance
Spirituality
Self-help
Reference
Writing
Artist (all my drawing, cross-stitch, crafts, etc)
Books About Books
General Fiction (non-genre)
General Non-Fiction
Currently Reading
To Read (my immediate TBR)

Books I don't own but read go in Read But Unowned as well as one of the categories above. I'll also use Favorites.

I doubt I'll use the Wishlist as it is in the thousands and I have it already in Amazon. No desire to rehash it.

I'll probably add subcategories back in tags like historical romance in romance.

Lastly, after I've edited my library to the above, I'll add some of my reading challenges, like 50 State, 1001 Fantasy, etc.

Oh, and every book I put into a specific collection, I remove from Your Library.

I'm sorry to hear that, Morphy -- it means people doing site-wide searches on tags (which I do all the time!) won't benefit from your tags anymore -- but it is, of course, your data to do whatever you want with.

I haven't even started putting anything in the default collections yet. I don't know if I will create more collections or not.

>9 lorax: I found that my tags were no different than anyone else's tags (fiction, werewolves, fantasy, etc.) and I had less than 10% of my books done anyway. I wouldn't be all that sorry. :)

I've added a Childhood Books collection, so that my recommendations and connections can finally stop being contaminated by all the Nancy Drew and Sweet Valley books that I haven't gotten rid of.

I'm also planning to add a collection for the books that used to belong to my grandmother, since they don't really reflect my tastes.

That's not a bad idea Zoe for the Childhood books. I have some of my kids books listed and that I have read and get tired of getting recommendations for them.

I'm moving pretty slowly, but I plan to have:
(these deal with the physical part, e.g., where are the owned books in the house)
Main Fiction
TV Fiction (Star Trek, etc.)
4-5 non-fiction collections (depending on topic, they're scattered about)
Probably a couple more I've not thought clearly about yet.
--
A collection for each member of the family including myself (some books will appear in more than one of these, or in some cases all three).

The myself one will the be the one I use for recommendations (combined with read but not owned, favorites, and wishlist).

I have just added 2 so far. "Books I didn't like" -obvious. And "check out", books that I would like to find out more about before deciding to add them to "Wishlist".

I won't be using collections to separate genres, because when I'm ready to do that, tags will work well.

For me the main function of Collections is to separate books that are in my physical library from those which I do not own at present.

My Library is everything I've read (since joining), so I made RNO inactive.

I added new collections for Currently Borrowed and Currently Loaned. I use private comments to record who loaned/borrowed them (which I keep even after the book is returned).

I haven't populated Favorites yet. I'm thinking that I might try a pretty full favorites list (all my 4's and 5's), and then turn off recommendations for everything except Favorites.

I'm actually removing all my tags other than where they are in my home. I find collections much more in line with my preferences. For me, much of tags is noise.

Why? I'm intrigued.

On recommendations

I would be wary of organizing your whole library around LT recommendations policy. Because we have a checkbox for "count in recommendations" does not mean that's all we'll ever do. There's every reason to think we'll be offering recommendations collection-by-collection, just as we do tag-by-tag soon.

I'll have to wait until I get back from vacation to actually populate these, but I kept Your Library for stuff I own, Read But Unowned (to be able to review them, and also for my own curiosity), TBR to keep track of interesting-sounding books that people mention here, and Wishlist (good for recs), and created:

Children's - children's books that I own, so that now my Zoobooks collection is not destroying "members with your books," hooray! (+!!!)

Short Stories - from an idea someone had in a previous collections thread. Manually-entered individual stories with their CK data filled out and {short story} noted in the title to protect against combining mishaps.

I am still working on my list but the major ones I added were

Fiction
Non-fiction
Comics and Graphic Novels
Magazines and Journals
In Bulgarian -- might remove this one later - still wondering if I really need it.
ESOL

I will probably add also
Read in 2009
Novels
Stories
Anthologies
Collections

and still wondering if I want to move the genres to collections or just to use the tags for them. Most likely leaving them as tags.

The only ones I'm planning on adding are ones to reflect how my books are shelved - so Genre (SF/Fantasy/Horror), (other) Fiction, Non-fiction, Reference, Graphic Novels, Games. Or at least that's the plan now - there's lots of thinking and playing with the possibilities to be done :-)

I originally intended to create a collection with a title such as "Books I got rid of because they sucked", but then I realized I could achieve the same result by putting them into the "Read but unowned" collection and rating them accordingly.

I think I'll wait and see what's coming regarding collection features and functionalities before I create my own.

I'm very happy that we have the collections. I can put now a little bit more structure in my collection. I just made a begin:
Besides the default ones that are already available, I created some new "collections":
- strips (comics)
- kalenders (calenders/agenda's)

The coming days I will make also a collection for my cross-stich books/leaflets

I'm another like Morphidae: tags are just noise and an annoyance to me, not just on LT but in their increasing proliferation all over the Internet. Don't ask me to explain in detail, Tim, because I can't. I never use them for myself nor look at others' - on the one or two occasions I've tried the latter I've found the information retrieved less than useful.

The preset collections are not for me - the concept of whether books are read or not is simply an irrelevance. I notice nobody mentions the 'favourites' collection. I had a brief flirtation with 'wishlist' but it doesn't suit. NB none of these remarks are intended as criticism, just a description of where I stand.

I joined LT for a specific purpose: to catalogue my over-large collection on a particular subject and it has saved my life. I feel now that I control it rather than vice versa. I've hitherto avoided cataloguing any other books and it hasn't really mattered - I have a different relationship with them as they are just a general reflection of the history of my life but I am not anal about them.

Collections is allowing me to create a proper separation between these 2 categories of books without creating a 2nd account and therefore encouraging me to catalogue the other stuff. Thus, within My Library there is now 'Food & Drink' and 'Others'. What I am noticing is how much longer it is taking me to list the other books on LT compared with around 2 and a half years ago when I inputted the bulk of my main collection. Why? Because LT is so much better now and it makes everything more complicated: more libraries to choose from, the capability to fill in far more detail, my greater understanding of the site which means I mess around with combining as I go along.

v

>17 timspalding: For me, much of tags is noise.
Why? I'm intrigued.

#1 I got most of my tags from... looking at other people's tags.
#2 I don't look for books by tags subject, i.e. werewolves, 1800's, historical romance. I look by "if I like this author, I'll like this other author" or by LTer recommendations or book lists.
#3 I'm not altruistic enough to do it just for other people.
#4 It is too much of a time sink to get all my books done and it was bugging me that only a small percentage of mine were tagged.
#5 I like picking from a small selection of categories rather than hundreds where I don't always remember how I tagged them, i.e. nonfiction vs. non-fiction.

#23 I mentioned favorites!

Moved to using collection-based unread/now reading instead of tags, and added a lot of books to read but unowned which were previously not in my library. Starting with a wishlist collection as well.

The only new collection I created was "textbooks", as I don't want those in my recommendations.

The two new collections I've created are "Given Away," for books mooched or donated, and "Christine's", to separate my books from those in the rest of the house.

I'll have to give some thought to further divisions -- but these are pretty exciting for now!

I've chosen 24 different categories (See my profile for the actual list - which keeps changing). This sounds like a lot of categories, but they work for me.

The most unusual category is probably Unworthy and Tossed Aside. That category is for books I started to read, didn't like, and will be probably be releasing to someone else via BookCrossing in the hopes that other readers might find those books interesting.

I've started playing with setting up some new collections. The first was my books I've lent out over the years that I don't think are coming back. I've called it "AWOL (ok some had leave but they've stayed out late)".

Ok will work on the collection title but am a bit tired.

Probably tags could do the same, as I had been tagging them @lent. But I like having the flexibility to exclude them from my library numbers to get a truer 'count'. That's why I've populated the default wishlist and read but unowned collections too.

I've only created a couple of new collections, the main one being
"Imaginative literature." When I took my cataloging and classification class in library school -- 1996 or 97 -- I became dissatisfied with how fiction, poetry, and to some extent essays and "creative non-fiction," are classified in both LC and Dewey. I started working on my own "classification" for these works in 1998. Finally, with Collections, I can put them all into their own box, and eventually order them in my catalog the way they should be ordered on my bookshelves, and then make those adjustments on my shelves so they agree.

If only I had a few days *completely free,* I would get my system finished and implemented, and would LOVE every minute of it. Too many other responsibilities, darn it! But it's beautiful to contemplate... :-)

*sighs*

One: Bookbinding projects. This includes books tagged "rebound" and those tagged "binding project - pending". (Some of the latter have been pending longer than we waited for Collections!)

I had thought about a Collection for books lent out, but, because I'm so paranoid about that, there are only a couple of books that would fall into that category, and it seems silly to create an entire collection for one or two books when I could as easily use tags.

I've played with creating a few of my own collections, but have yet to create the one I'm tempted to.

"Show off books" for books I have or acquire somehow, have no intention of reading any time soon and may never read, but all the same will let me boast/gloat/whatever that I actually have a copy. *G*

Morphy~ you are my hero. Seriously.

I hate tagging. I have only done it due to feeling compelled to by the
talk of tags here. I agree with you on everything.. although, most of my books have
some sort of tag.. mostly fiction, non- or nonfiction .. etc.

I split out my wishlist, unowned books, reading status and a few other things. I had never had any compunctions about adding wishlist, and read but unowned books and marking them with tags, so the feature thus far is not a big change for me. My more significant use of collections awaits the promise of integration with other functions.

I'm rather surprised at all of the people who felt that they could not add a wishlist or unowned books without the collections function. Oh well, I suppose that discussion is now passe.

I am very, very happy with collections. Because my catalog has always been my physical library, I had a fair number of "books" I never included because they were fundamentally different from real finished physical books. Especially ARCs, of which I have quite alot. So my first personal collection is for ARCs-- these are books I have, I may even have read, written reviews of, etc. They are in my "reading life". But they aren't the finished book so I never wanted them included with my actual physical library. I'll probably create another collection of audiobooks. And I have been finally importing "wishlist" books, although in my case "wishlist" is less "I want these books" and more "I might be interested." If I find a new author, I tend to add every book I can find by them onto my wishlist so I can see what I still have to read by the author, or what I chose not to read. I have a kind of "completist" tendency towards authors I'm interested in, so wishlisting their books helps me know where I stand with them.

I like having the "Read but unowned" set apart, although I wish the total (All Books) didn't affect the Zeitgeist stats. I have at least a couple hundred uncatalogued books, and quite a few multi-volume sets entered as one title, so in Pedant Universe my total number isn't terribly far from the number of owned books, but still.

I'd like the ability (which if I understand correctly we're expected to have down the road) to fine-tune connections and total numbers (e.g. establish connections via "Read but unowned", but subtract this set from the total that lands me on the Zeitgeist "biggest libraries" list).

I'm not feeling terribly creative regarding custom collections at the moment. If we had the ability to exclude sets from the total number, as mentioned above, and/or connections, I'd make one for my ISBN-less comics.

Well I did create a collection. It isn't any thing profound like some of those listed above. It is just To Read Again. Just some books that I would like to read again just not sure when that will be.

The problem for me--and I know this point was made by other people too--is that collections in this guise simply aren't different enough from tags.

I just don't see that they do anything that tags don't.

>37 LolaWalser:
Allow you to exclude some books from being used for recommendations and/or connections

#38 I thought that was only theory so far, you mean it's already working? My connections numbers have been frozen for days (maybe a week) now.

P.S. As for recommendations (I never look at those), it was my understanding you could already select a subset to look at--by tags.

I haven't had a chance to play with collections yet (oh, the horror!) but I may use it for some items that are irrelevant for my tagging system, but that I now have in Comments, stuff like "signed" or "gift". I expect I'll take physical location out of tags -- who but me and Spousal Unit cares if it's in Box 29 or Unpacked or Loose Somewhere in the House (hmm, I like that one...) or physical form (mm=Mass Market Paperback). I'll probably shift some other tags into collections, too, such as "fiction" or "reference" for the less-obvious-than-a-dictionary reference books.

It's a bit overwhelming, really. I had 2 years to massage my method with 2000 books, now 2000 books to rearrange at once. I think I'll use collections, but it will take a long time to fine tune it to my personal needs.

Wishlist will stay on Amazon -- people actually *buy* us stuff from that list!

>39 LolaWalser:

Yes. If you have a lot of books, your member-to-member data is not updating right now. It will start updating again soon.

> PhaedraB

If you put your wishlist on LibraryThing I'll buy you a book ;)

> 39 : Yes, it's working - or supposed to be working at any rate. But as long as a book is in any collection you have marked for connections / recommendations you'll still get them. So you have to exclude those books from the other categories somehow, even if they are in your library. Slowly but steadily working towards that goal for some of mine.

I have created a collection for challenge books since a lot of them were from the library and not previously catalogued and those are also going in Read Not Owned. But it's slow as I have to dig them out of the relevant Talk threads and catalogue them.

>42 Nicole_VanK:
as long as a book is in any collection you have marked for connections / recommendations you'll still get them.

Really? This strikes me as backward. I would want all books in a collection marked for for exclusion to be excluded regardless of what other collections those books might be in. As such I would reverse the language of the check-boxes, have the default be included with boxes checked to exclude.

If you are describing it correctly, I have little use for this feature because the only books I want to exclude from connections/recommendations are books that I own and are in my "Your Library." I suppose I could create a dummy collection of all books in "Your Library" not in the collections I wish to exclude, but that just seems silly.

#44

I would want all books in a collection marked for for exclusion to be excluded regardless of what other collections those books might be in.

But there is only one connections list, only one work page etc. You can't have both states (not a connection/is a connection) obtain at the same time.

>45 LolaWalser:
Well, yes, one state must trump the other and now inclusion is trumping exclusion. I would like the reverse. Currently the boxes say "Include in Connections" and "Include in Recommendations" and are by default checked. This wording almost requires that inclusion trumps exclusion because the checked box strongly implies that the books in this collection will be included, regardless of what other collections they might also be in.

If the wording were reversed, to "Exclude from Connections" and "Exclude from Recommendations" with the default as unchecked then checking would strongly imply that books in this collection are excluded regardless of any other collection they might be in (i.e. what I want).

I've started with the default Collections . I'm using Your Library , Read But Unowned , Wishlist and Favorites . I probably will create separate Collections for my anthology books and poetry books and maybe reference books too .

All I have added is "Owned but unread" to balance the default collection, "Read but unowned". k4k

#46

then checking would strongly imply that books in this collection are excluded regardless of any other collection they might be in (i.e. what I want).

Just curious--I'm not following. Imply to whom, how, and what exactly? What is the value of that "imply"? Connections are book-based. If A and B share the same book, "Tweet", it will appear as a connection if both choose to include it in connections. A makes another collection, that includes "Tweet", but makes the entire new set unconnected. "Tweet", however, still reflects the connection to B and the LT work "Tweet", made through the older collection.

And why not? I'm sure I'm falling short of imagining reasons for a "double state" of connections, I'd be curious to hear them. IF we had some things we don't have--like collection-tailored connections list, multiple work pages for the same work etc.--basically a series of LT parallel universes--then yes, I could see some point to this.

But as it is... Anyway, it's possible I'm misunderstanding your objection.

>49 LolaWalser:
To take you second question first, why do I want this?

I have a set of old Palladium role playing books. They are in my library and I want them in my "Your Library" collection, however I have no interest in any connections or recommendations that they might generate. I would like to exclude these books from those functions. However, if BarkingMatt's comment in message 42 is correct, putting these books in a RPGs collection and unchecking the "Include in Connections" and "Include in Recommendations" boxes will not be enough because the books are still in "Your Library," a collection with the inclusion boxes checked. To accomplish my goal I would have to create a new collection, "All books in my library and not RPGs" make sure the inclusion boxed are checked there and then uncheck the inclusion boxes in both "My Library" and "RPGs." This strikes me as very silly, but it is what is necessary if inclusion trumps exclusion.

My point in talking about what the language implies, is that the functions need to do what people think they will do when they read the descriptions. It would be odd to have "Include in Recommendations" really mean include in recommendations unless otherwise not included in some other collection. It would not be so odd to have exclusion trump inclusion if the default were inclusion and the check-box read "Exclude from recommendations."

I hope I said that clearly enough.

I see--I was thinking of the effect on connections more than recommendations (the latter aren't something I spend much time on). However, the simplest solution, especially if you're not constantly adding new such books, might be to go through recommendations and delete all that reflect this subset of your Your Library. (Simplest not being necessarily short and non-tedious.)

As for connections to these books, if they are skewing your MWYB list, there you really have no other solution, except segregating them in a separate unconnected collection. The funny thing is, I've seen many people bring up the need for collections precisely because they wanted to separate out large subsets of such books--gaming, hobby, sf etc.

51: Deleting each rec individually would take forever.

I agree, a separate collection is probably a better idea.

"On Loan" is my first new one. I'm still considering my other options . . .

>51 LolaWalser:
The funny thing is, I've seen many people bring up the need for collections precisely because they wanted to separate out large subsets of such books--gaming, hobby, sf etc.

This is the point. And the RPG books were just one example. I'm perfectly capable of working out brute force solutions but the promise of collections was the ability to create sets of books and elegantly manage their interaction with various LT functions.

I still maintain that switching from a paradigm of inclusion to one of exclusion would solve the problem. Did anything come up in BETA to explain why they don't want to do that, or what other problems it might cause?

54: It was brought up in beta, but nothing was decided with inclusion or exclusion.

As someone noted, it has to be either inclusion or exclusion. The inclusion way is how it was designed, both because I prefer it and because it's technically better. The system only loads the collections that "matter." At any time, memory contains many users' collections, but only the collections that it needs. Exclusion would require always loading ALL the users' collections, or anyway more.

If it's a performance issue, it should definitely be inclusion.

>56 timspalding:
Thanks for chiming in. Here's the odd thing about inclusion. Say I want to exclude from connections a certain set of books from my "Your Library" collection (I gave an example in 50 above). I don't make a set for those books and exclude them. Rather I turn off connections for "Your Library," make a set of all those book in "Your Library" that I want included with connections on. Then if I want give the set of books I'm excluding it's own collection name, that's another collection I have to create (with the connections box off of course).

Am I wrong about this? If I'm not it just seems too convoluted.

I can't fully understand the programming issues, but my suggestion would be as follows: For each user and each function LT creates a hidden inclusion set. The user works with exclusions, but LT converts the instructions from the user's various excluded collections into a single set of included books that is used to actually run the function. Still no good?

41 > > PhaedraB

If you put your wishlist on LibraryThing I'll buy you a book ;)

Bribery! W00t!

I've added:

"Previously owned" for books that I read when I owned them and then gave away and
"Old Books" for a collection of books that I have merely for their age, and that I wanted excluded from recommendations.

I've also been adding quite a lot to "Read but not owned" because I have been keeping my LT library to strictly books I owned.

I've noticed plenty of people on librarything have dvds and cds cataloged in their libraries. Now that we have collections, I'd like to add some of my dvds. I tried adding a dvd the same way I do books, but it didn't come up in the search. So then I found a user who had dvds in his library and tried to add one to mine that way - didn't work. Is there a trick to it? Is librarything not letting people add dvds anymore?

Sorry if this wasn't the best place to bring this up, but I wasn't sure where that would be. I figured it was relevant since I'd make a collection just for dvds. :)

>61 jenreidreads:
You cannot add DVDs through Amazon. You cannot add anything directly from another LT user. The latter is the whole "green plus" controversy. I won't try to rehash that here, you might poke around for other threads on the topic.

DVDs can be added through manual entry or from library sources. My recollection is that the Library of Congress is not so hot for DVDs but that some university libraries have decent collections and that there are some local library consortia available as sources and they might be even better.

Many people suggest adding DVD in square brackets to the title to avoid combining confusion. You also have to decide who to put as the primary author. I usually use the director, but as LT doesn't really support DVDs, there is no standard.

Collection: This, That, and the Other
These are books with a title or subtitle in the form of a triplet. the most popular of these on LT is The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe but once you start looking there are many of these. I have a possibly unhealthy fascination with this format for titles and have looked forward to collections as a way to "collect" them without adding them to my library "your books" which I reserve for books I actually own. I have started a topic in the book talk group for anyone who has suggestions to add to this collection. http://www.librarything.com/talktopic.php?topic=66587

40 PhaedraB: "Wishlist will stay on Amazon -- people actually *buy* us stuff from that list!" -- I agree! Why would I move it here when you can't buy it through LT?

41 Tim: If I put my wishlist up here, will you buy me a book? You can't be that desperate for data, can you? (-;

I haven't had time to make Collections yet *curses busy schedule*, but here are the ones I made while in beta group (and then deleted 'cause I wanted to start over):

wishlist
to read
library
bdsm/torture/abuse/etc reference (will include both read and wishlisted)

Of necessity, I've created a collection called Reviewed and Released. I know that there is a button which indicates a reviewed book, but I've already inadvertently deleted too many reviews when I've released books I've already read. This is to keep me from doing that.

I don't want to just keep huge lists of read (but gone) book, but I do want to preserve the reviews that I haven't already accidentally deleted. :(

You can't add DVDs easily because this is a BOOK site.

ahem.

Which in my opinion means that it is a place to catalog books.

I created a couple of collections:

Read 2009, for the books I have read this year.
Stinkers for those that I have listed as bad reads
Reference for those books that are to be dipped into for help
Duplicates for those books that are extra copies
Quit for the books that I didn't finish

All these are also still in my Your Library collection too.

Of the default collections I am using Your Library, Currently Reading, and To Read. I made the rest inactive. I am thinking about whether I really want to keep To Read as a collection.

I tried Wishlist, and though I could keep it out of Your Library, it added to my book count total and ended up in All Collections, So its a no go. I have my Wishlist on Amazon too, and a listing here on a thread. I may buck the trend and buy a second account for all my non-existent books. Might then use Read But Unowned in that account for all the books I read as a kid (that I can remember) and no longer have.

I have added a couple new ones.

"Daughters name" Library - that way all her YA books are separate and not part of my library. And I also created a Prize winner/nominee collection, then tagged with the proper prize and whether long listed, short listed or winner. I had them tagged before but each prize would have 3 different tags to check when looking up, now they are all together. Oh and the embarrassingly large, Own but unread

So far I've created "Enfer" (as a tribute to that term for "restricted area" in old libraries), "art history" and "history" for my main fields of study, and "comics" and "literature / fiction" (I refuse to distinguish between high and low).

I separated "comics" because I mean to exclude them from connections and maybe recommendations. Not that I'm adverse to them, I'm a cartoonist by trade. But having the complete Tintin and most of Asterix seriously messes up the relevance of connections (as I see it). Ultimately this means I will have to disable connections on my "your library" I guess.

That's why I'm also still trying to come up with a good catchword for a collection that would include religion, philosophy and politics, and will also probably create a collection for music, literary theory / criticism, etc.

Mostly my connections are just duplicates of my tags, but I have started to add generic wishlist books, and it's a pain in the ass. I've also got 'phantom books I own as omnibi' to add omnibuses and contents of omnibuses too. All of which makes my totals look spuriously high. I guess I'm going ot have to purge 'My Library' and rename it as the books I care about - so that it's not full of 'Rubbish' and 'OtherHalf's' books generating spurious recomendations and connections.

Oh that will be dull afternoon of tedious clicking.

I have to add my opinion that this inclusion model for recommendations and similar libraries does not work well in practice in combination with Your Library. I have a group of books that were bought by my wife which I have no interest in I would like to exclude them from the above functions. But they are intermingled with all the other books in my house and I consider them part of our library.

You had a similar problem with privacy settings and you made the choice to handle it on a book-by-book basis. Maybe you need to do the same for recommendations and similar libraries.

73 > Hey, be a sport. Tell the Mrs., "Look, here's one you might be interested in." :-)

I have only played with collections a little bit. Apart from the initial pre-set collections, I've created one called "Started, but not finished" and one "To be purchased," as I intend to use the "Wishlist" to track anything I don't own but am interested in reading -- I usually only buy a book if I like the author, or if I have read the book and like it enough to buy it.

So far, I've added 3 collections. "Abandoned" books - those that I started but didn't finish for some reason. "Owned" - since most of my books come from the public library, I don't own very many of my own books. This is the counter-part of the default "read but unowned" which I will deactivate. "On hold for later" which is for books that I've checked out but had to return before reading them, or finishing them, but that I'm interested in getting again. It is not a very good title and I'm trying to come up with a better one. I plan to add a collection for "reference" books that I own, since they are mine and I love them, but they are for using rather than reading, as someone already mentioned. I'm also thinking how best to use the "wishlist" collection - something totally new for me.

I'm having trouble deciding how to define "my library" now - it used to be only those books that I'd had some relationship with - I'd read them, or tried to read them. Now, I'm not sure. Right now, it includes those books that I've read, plus "currently reading" plus "to be read" (books I've got checked out of the library - or own - that I haven't started reading yet). I'm not deleting any tags for a while until I settle down on how I want the collections to look.

Abandoned will probably come next. It will be funny to see how long those in that category stay in My Library before moving to Kicked to the Curb.

I'm keeping all my books in 'My Library' because, for me, that's what it is - I haven't listed books I've read but don't possess, nor do I have a wishlist. There are a few books that I have lent which stay in my library for as long as I can sustain the hope that the borrowers will give them back......

I have 'collected' some books as opposed to simply acquiring them and I am pleased to be able to give them more than tag status. I am also very tempted to create a collection - outside 'My Library' - for my DVDs, despite the difficulties. We'll see!

So far, I've created two:

Books to Investigate -- this is the whole reason I wanted collections in the first place, not necessarily a wishlist but books that sound intriguing that I want to think about. I still haven't added all the books I have on a separately maintained list. I am not including these books in "My Library" because I don't own them.

Ex P -- books that belonged to my parents. I still haven't unpacked all the boxes I took from their apartment so this will grow.

I will probably also add collections for books that belong to my sweetie but that I've read and for books that are at a family house in the mountains.

Beyond that I'm not sure.

Of the preset collections, beyond "Your Library," I'm only using Currently Reading.

When I have time, I'm going to read this whole thread and may get other ideas.

rebeccanyc - I'm so glad I'm not the only one who distinguishes wishlist from stuff I want to check out. They are distinct to me and I'll be naming my Books to Investigate after a favorite Dire Straits song - Private Investigations. Wishlist is for the exact edition of a book I want and plan to buy; for example the Folio Society version of Frankenstein. Yay for people who think like me!!!

Ah, I'm getting more good ideas. I think that , like abbotthomas (#78) I will make a collection for my specially collected older books. I'm still looking for a good name . . . I want something beyond "old," "rare" isn't necessarily true of all of them, "antiquarian" sounds too highfalutin' for me . . . well, I'll figure something out! I'll also probably start a collection for books removed from my library -- I'm thinking "Weeded from my library" (or just "Weeded") as the collection name for that one.

How about "Well Aged"?

#82 -- Yes, but that would be the collection for "used cheese" from the Green Dragon, wouldn't it? ;-)

Geezers

#81

Vintage?

#85 -- Ooh, I like it!

Regarding Inclusion/Exclusion:

It may appear that the "include only" approach limits what we can do (and in some cases amy run counter to intuition). I think it is the only way to have predictable control of whether a book is included or not. I know, at first glance, having "collections" with define exclusion subsets seems handy. Such a technique would certainly grant different ways of excluding or including books; but it would also make it difficult to determine why "That Book I Own Because My Aunt Gave It To Me But I Despise" keeps being included in recommendations. You have to sort through two different types collections, determine how their various include/exclude settings are interacting that is giving the result you don't want, then determine which one to change or where to move to to get the result you do want. Chaos. I've seen such chaos before: As a network administrator, I've worked with many different group permission models...the ones with include/exclude functionality degenerate to chaos with very few groups.

I think with some experimentation, you'll find include only will both be the most understandable, and involve the least amount of "work" (both on your part and the technology's).

I think with many (most?) people's libraries, the way to approach the problem is to mark "Your Library" as a do not include, then have a collection (or two, or three, as needed) that are the ones included. I can easily see the possibility that either "Favorites" is the only "included" collection in someone's library, or they have a collection for that specific purpose (and possibly Favorites, Wishlist in addition to that one).

Each person should, of course, spend some time trying out different approaches, and see which one works best for them. Never too early or too late to perform such experiments. :)

I commented somewhat on what collections I have earlier, but I think some comments on the "why?" behind what ones I have/will have might help:

First of all, my primary objective in using Library Thing is to have a physical inventory of my books (to parallel the physical inventory I have other possessions), in a big part because I've gotten to the point where accidental duplication is a problem and because its useful for insurance purposes.

Growing out of that is it becomes useful to me to know where a book is. We have books in nearly every room of the house. In the past, I was using a tag to denote where a book is (oddly I had used the word 'collection'). This worked clumsily for me. So the first immediate benefit of Collections is that I can now separate the books into Collections based on which physical collection they're in.

It gets more complicated from there. My wife has books. My daughter has books. The three of us have overlapping tastes, but there are definitely books I read they don't and vice-versa. But to fulfill the physical inventory requirement, they're all in there (or will be...inventory not yet complete!). This means some more distinctions need to be made, ones that (in theory) could be done with tags, but actually I found clumsy to do that way (so I gave up). End result: Three collections which represent the books that are in the library because of a respective person...these will likely overlap. :)

All that said...the most immediate benefit I've had from collections: I had previously used a tag to make a reading list, but it was too clumsy to work with that way, so I stopped bothering to consult it. Now, the "To read" "currently reading" collections, combined with the 'started/ended' fields being included in one of my list views means I'm able to track my reading list easily, and move things in/out of "to read"/"currently reading" quickly enough that it keeps pace with my reading pace (I'm 'on vacation', so that is about 1-2 books per day, barring a long one).

Hopefully, some of these long-winded thoughts helps someone solve (or get ideas for) their own library project. Good luck. I return to my regularly scheduled book: Pride and Prejudice.

Wow, that was great information and gave me a lot to think about, feaelin. I really haven't given much thought to the inclusion or exclusion of books in my library or collections. You have given me some food for thought now on my approach to the collections.

I have books listed in my library that aren't mine but they are husbands or another family members book. I have also added the books that my kids read when they were little because I do plan to keep them even if I don't plan to read them.

Thanks for that wonderfully written post!!

I've only created 3 new collections thus far:

Comic books - shouldn't need any explanation.

Read - Books I've read, regardless of whether I own them or not. Does not include books that were read to me as a child (and which have been tagged as such.)

Upcoming books - books on my wishlist that have not yet been published. Still debating on whether or not to include these books in my Wishlist collection. (Currently they're in both.)

>87 feaelin:
I thank you for addressing the inclusion vs. exclusion issue for function integration. However, you seemed to be objecting to having a system where "include this collection" and "exclude this collection" are both available check-boxes. I agree that this would be impossible. What I was suggesting above (messages 50, 54, 58) was having only an exclusion check-box.

I can deal with the current inclusion system. It basically means unchecking the inclusion box for all of my natural (i.e. subject or status related) collections and creating a new collection with the sole purpose of indicating the books I want included in the function. This is not overly burdensome, although it may mean creating more of these function-only collections as new options are added.

So this does feel like more work for me. I can understand it, but it feels less natural to me than excluding individual collections directly. I have no idea about work for the servers, but I would be interested in hearing why my suggestion in message 58 requires significantly more computer power than current system.

New collections -

ER Requests - to help me keep track

and

Stuck in the Middle - those books I still own, but am stuck in or abandoning. We shall see how long they remain in My Library before being shuffled to the Kicked to the Curb collection.

I don't think I'm going to use the Wishlist default collection. I at least want it broken down into Wishlist Non-fiction and Wishlist Fiction. I might start some genre or category wishlits like Wishlist Science, Wishlist Science Fiction, etc.

So far, I have owned unread non-fiction and fiction for organization purposes.

Futurism- I made this collection for the day when collection specific recommendations are activated.

Started- Remains Unfinished For every book I finish I start about 1.4 or so. 90% of these will remain unfinished for one reason or another. Dislike, found a better one, whatever.

Maybe, Maybe Not- Not really interested enough to raise to wishlist status but something about it sounded like something I might be interested in reading someday.

My use of LT has changed over time. I'm sure my use of collections will too. However I use them, it will happen slowly. I tend to put five or so in a collection at a time, then hours or days will go by before I add something else. I'm not a sit-down and do it all at once kind of person.

92>

Any reason you couldn't accomplish the "Wishlist Science Fiction", etc, with collections + tags, or overlapping collections?

One extra collection I am planning is "Work" or "Development" or "Professional" or something along those lines. I will advertise this to my colleagues, but I probably need to think about it a bit further - I can give people comments on any of the books included, but only some of them (the paper ones I, or my employer, own) are available for them to borrow, so I may want to indicate which, perhaps by tags.

Oh and another one. Corralled. For those books that exist within an omnibus.

We're going to add a "Wishlist" checkbox for each collection, so you can have multiple wishlists.

Your library (3808)
Currently reading (1)
Favorites (11)
First Read of an Author (439)
Graphic Novels and Comic Collections (105)
Last Read by Author (111) ****
Publishers of Note (27) *
Read (2016) ***
Reading the Cities (178) **
Reading the States (191) **
Reading the World (386) **
Read but unowned (266)
Sports Related (112)
To read (1506)
Wishlist (12)
All collections (3818)

I'm toying with the idea of creating another collection "Favorite books of Author", where I'd put in my favorite book by each author I've read. As long as I've read at least some number of books. Like 2. "Favorites" would remain five star books.

Oh, and I might need to add an "Advanced Reader", early reader collection for my early editions. I have several different tags for various reasons.

Ah, and a collection of all the books I've reviewed. Maybe. Simple enough to just look at review page, though might or might not create said collection.

* I've tagged the publisher of some books and while I haven't been able to get all of them yet, I'm looking to see why. I know why HardCase crime (or whatever that one is called), which isn't in there yet, and Soho Crime (tends to have a good collection of international mysteries), but not the rest.

** I have, off and on, attempted to read cites/states/the world, but found it difficult to keep track. A collection helps, though here it would be nice if I could filter the tags. As in display only city names in the city one, and states, etc. And a turn on/off filter. As I also am curious as to which ones are mystery, history, etc. so on occasion would want to turn on all tags.

*** I'm surprised Read isn't a default category.

**** I have a tag "last read by author" that basically is slapped on a book to note that I'm done with that author after reading that book. I created the collection, though, with an idea to track the last book I read with an author, like, dislike, meh.

We're going to add a "Wishlist" checkbox for each collection, so you can have multiple wishlists.

This is getting soooooo complicated! I invited a newbie who joined LT this week and found her posting a tag for wishlist in the review data box. I tried to tell her about reviews, tags, collections, wishlists, etc. (which I clearly understand) and then began to wonder how anyone new *ever* learns to use this site. :)

I separated my Georgette Heyer books from Your Library in order to make better connections. Oh boy did that ever work nicely, so many new similar libraries to look at. Once I've had my fill I may combine the collections together again, but OTOH why bother? I don't need LT to suggest missing books by a favourite author.

I also wanted to cut down the size of my To read collection to a manageable number so I made a separate collection for the recent library discards and discount books I've bought on spec and won't know until I try reading them whether they are worth keeping or not. I've excluded these from Your Library and so recommendations and connections. One of the books turned up as a LT recommendation today based on two other books in my Library. Looks like it's time to move that book into the main To read collection. This is so much fun.

100> You just wanted number 100, so you briefly pretended you had a message for me. :(

Some people are awful that way

93- for the last year or so I have only been tagging the books I have finished.

97- I like the publisher angle. There is some great small publishers out there.

96- how many collections have been started so far?

--> 101

Mike, I did have a message for you, but LT swallowed it!

I was replying to this.

Ah, and a collection of all the books I've reviewed.

I think that Reviewed should be a standing Collection and not that tiny icon on the edit bar. Already, I've inadvertently deleted irretrievable reviews by deleting books and not noticing I had reviews attached to them.

I think I will cross post this to the Site Recommendations thread.

Collections allowed me to do my own complex searches - things the broken search can't handle.

So, in my collection all books should have a tag as either mine, my wife's, the kid's, or unowned. But 100's of books didn't have the tag yet. So, I added all the books to a Temp collection, and then removed by existing tags narrowing down to the untagged books. It then took about 30 minutes to fix all my missing tags.

I did a similar thing to create a "Children's Books" collection - which included books tagged "@Kids" as well as unowned books and other various existing or lack of tags.

And, after I did that, it was easy to create a "All Non-Children's Books" collection, even though I don't have anything like an "adult" tag, nor do I want one. I just added all books on the collection, than changed to the "Children's Books" collection and in PowerEdit mode removed all the children's books in one step from the "All Non-Children's Books" collection.

Thinking about it now, I probably could have done all that with tags. I guess this just seemed easier for me.

At the moment my collections look like this

Your library (2,039)
All Non-Children's Books (1,495)
All Children's Books (544)
My Books (791)
Rica's Books (686)
The Kids Books (353)
Unowned (209)
Read but unowned (116)
Library Books (137)
Favorites (81)
Currently reading (1)
Wishlist (42)

, I probably could have done all that with tags.

I find myself wavering, not really knowing what to keep as tags and what to make into Collections. Oh, yeah, then there's the option of keeping something in both the tags and the Collections (Early Reviewers, for instance). :(

I am not clearing any of my tags, in fact I am adding some tags to reflect the collection the book goes into. Not all, but some of the more specialized ones.

Some seem redundant to me. I feel that, in most, I should pick one or the other. Tags or collections.

I separated my Georgette Heyer books from Your Library in order to make better connections. Oh boy did that ever work nicely, so many new similar libraries to look at.

Wait, are the Connections/Recommendations settings supposed to be having an effect now? My top similar libraries are still based on the Sweet Valley books that I've removed from my Library.

So many great ideas. I've borrowed some for my collections.

Athenaeum countrylife (my entire book world)
My Library (owned)
Wishlist (tagged: “A list”, etc.)
Litwish Prospects (books to check out further before adding to wishlist)
Favorites
Inclusions (tagged for their omnibus, collection, etc)
Gone (tags: loosed, discarded, returned)
Loaned Out
(a few collections for favorite authors or publishers)
Cookbooks
Uncollected

I think the best use of collections is to separate out existentially different categories of books—particularly books you have and ones you don't (ie., wishlists). A secondary use is to separate out distinct collections—collections that are by their nature non-overlapping. Whether a book is in Cambridge or Portland, for example, is a very basic fact. It makes a lot of sense to "stay within" one of these collections for a while, while doing checks against the shelves, for example. The feature encourages strong divisions, not the endless permutations of tags. By contrast, the thing that makes tagging good is how I can have both Turkey and Archaeology tags, and some books that belong in both.

#112 Let me ask a tangential question that occured to me today. If I place a book into 2 different categories, can I have different tags for that book in each category? Or will all tags for a book show up in all categories that book belongs to?

All my books are in one place (where I live), apart from those in my practice, which I have tagged accordingly, so I will not be having too many collections at the moment. I did include a few audio books in my catalog, though, and removed those now by creating an "Audio books" collection. I might go and create a "Books in my Practice" collection, but books do wander back and fro so I am not sure whether that would be worth the effort. Anyway, collections are an interesting feature and very well devised, in my view.

>13 crazy4reading:

Tags are applied to the books. Books can live in multiple collections, but they are single books.

>112 timspalding: I think the best use of collections is to separate out existentially different categories of books

This was why I wanted collections. I have so many ARCs and Galleys...and they are an active part of my reading life. I often do reviews based on them, I sometimes only ever have a galley copy of a favorite author's book. But an ARC is a fundemantally different animal from a finished copy in my mind--existentially different! So I never could include my ARCs in my regular library, which I self-defined at the start as books I actually own.

I use tags for points of interest about a book--sometimes subjects, but also characters, styles, places, or things that relate to my personal history with the book. I could have added a tag of "arc" and imported all my galleys, but I wanted to preserve the integrity of "your library" so that you would know the number you saw were actual physical books. Undiluted by "almost-books."

Yet that decision left a large part of my reading life out of Library Thing. So Collections has been a godsend. It's like having your cake and getting to eat it. All of it!

I am really appreciating the 'Read but not owned' collection idea. I borrow books from the library, my family and my bookstore, and usually write a review. The same goes if I read one of my own books and then add it to our bookshop stock instead of keeping it. It means that my library was previously not representative when it came to Early Reviewers etc, and the only place I could add reviews for these unowned books was my thread. Now I can add books I've borrowed, or read and then given away, with their reviews, and my library is now much more representative of my reviewing AND of my reading.

>3 Bookmarque::
Bookmarque - childhood books are a great idea. I was considering something similar, a wishlist of childhood books that I'd like to own, but so far few of my old faves are on LT (and for those that are there are no covers). When I have the time to hand-enter them, I might just do it anyway.

>53 Helcura::
Helcura - On Loan is another good idea. I'm always lending books and forgetting who's got them!

My library consists of read books - I use LT as a reading diary - so I would like to change "My Library" to a "Read" collection. Is there anyway of changing the name of the collection?

118: I'd be interested in that childhood books collection of yours. :)

There's no way to change the name of the system collections, as those are used for stats and the like. However, you could always label it on your profile as "books I've read" and Tim mentioned in a different thread that he's thinking about adding some type of mechanism where you could label each collection with a phrase.

thanks Moomin_Mama - my stumbling block w/childhood books is that I can't remember them all. : ) But, as I do I'll add them. Some I wish I still had.

Oh and here's a weird thing, I was watching and episode of Trust Me (the advertising agency show) and on a shelf in the background was a big book about the states that I had as a kid. I'll have to try to remember the name and add it.

>119 infiniteletters::
Keep an eye out, I'll start it fairly soon! An online list will be a real help when searching for old titles.

>120 Bookmarque::
I'm always on the look out for old favourites, it's amazing where you spot them. I often find books I'd forgotten that I'd forgotten until I see them. What with the nostalgia craze, and our ability to indulge in it with the internet, I think publishers are missing a trick somewhere. Well produced omnibus editions of old favourites (like Keats's Neighborhood) would do well, wouldn't they?

I've been thinking about this, and it occurs to me that I have a lot of very specific tags that could be combined in overarching Collections. My history and art books, for example, tend to be tagged, not merely "history" or "art", but "history-England-medieval" and "art-Japanese", etc. These might usefully be gathered into "History" and "Art" collections.

I think I might do this.

I have inherited books tagged with their original owners (Dad, Gramma Spray, Aunt Hulda, etc.). My newest collection gathers all those tags into Family Books. The tags are specific, and the collection connects them into a more general group.

I've settled into the following types of collections:

Ownership (Your Library=full physical copy owned, Read but unowned, Digital copy, Selections copied, Loan from library, Wishlist=unowned & unread, Probationary wishlist);
Reading status (Read, Currently reading, To read, Unread, Reference);
Special subjects (Sheetmusic/Chords, Cookbooks, Children's Books, RPG{Role Playing Games});
The functional collection for books I want in Connections/Recommendations (Everything but the special subjects and the probationary wishlist. Yes I do want my main wishlist included in connections and recommendations);
I also put some books in the default Favorites.

Until more functions are added collections will not be a great improvement over tags, at least for me.

Until more functions are added collections will not be a great improvement over tags, at least for me.

Which functions do you want?

>121 Moomin_Mama::
Instead of making a completely separate collection for childhood books, I've put the ones I'm looking for in my wishlist, tagged nostalgia, and will slowly add new finds to my library as I read them. It makes sense to me ;)

Will do the same for other types of books I like to collect at some point.

I haven't made a Childhood Books collection yet... I know I want to, but it's going to be a big job for me to sort them all out. I have a kid/children-books tag, but it includes ALL books that are children's books, including the many that I've read since childhood (yes, I still read kids books, so sue me). Sometimes I can't remember if I read a book during childhood or later on.

It is so great that everyone has been finding different uses for Collections. Before Collections everything I added was in Your Library which didn't strike me as accurate because I am also using LT to track my reading (which by the way, I really love the ability to record the start and end dates for books I have read - makes it so easy to search what I read in a given month!)

With Collections I am now making use of the following categories:

Your Library - the books I currently own
To Read - the books I own (or may place in Wishlist) that make up my TBR pile
Read but Unowned - self explanatory
Currently Reading - again, self explanatory
Favorites - A general catchall of favorite books I have read (usually many time!) that do not fit into the two Favorites categories I created:

Favorites - Childhood
Favorites - Classics

I am sure that as I continue to play in Collections, other collection categories will be created :-)

>125 timspalding: I know the question wasn't addressed to me, but for one, I'd like the Connections checkbox to start working.

What is it supposed to do ?

I thought Members with Your Books would no longer be based on books that occur only in a collection with "Include in Connections" unchecked.

129/131: I can't unscramble the logic of post 131 (it's late here) but it seems to be working for me: I only have one collection with the connections box checked and that is the only one getting connections (thank goodness or I'd be screaming).

v

Books would not show up in your Members with Your Books if they are solely in a collection that has the Include in Connections unchecked ?

I keep getting mixed feedback about this. Chris had said that it wasn't supposed to be working yet, so I haven't reported it as a bug.

But both my #2 and #3 Members with My Books are determined by books that I've moved from my Library into a collection that's not supposed to count for connections.

I think the problem is that the checkbox was tied to the date for a while. So the checkbox was checked.

Anyway, I don't think you'll see any changes from now on.

>125 timspalding:
Which functions do you want?
Basically, anything that LT has done for your whole catalog up to now I would like to be able to do with individual collections. So, "Members with your books" for each collection; statistics for each collection (the main statistics and the various other tools like CK and memes listed on that page); clouds for each collection, especially the Tag Mirror; separate galleries for each collection; and different colored check-marks on series/awards/recommendations lists (as has been suggested by others).

I would like to be able to exclude collections (esp. wishlists) from site-wide aggregate statistics like zeitgeist and the number of users on the work pages. Or perhaps we could have a triple listing (number in Your library/number in Read but unowned/number in Wishlist).

When looking at other user's profile pages I would like to be able to quickly see whether the shared books are in the user's Wishlist, if one exists. Perhaps other collections too, but the wishlist is most important. I would like this first and foremost as a service for other users looking at my profile.

I also would be mildly interested in an "Others currently reading what I'm reading/have recently read" feature, although I expect it would be frequently blank for many of the books I read.

Is that a big enough list? Now, get to work ;). But seriously, for me the promise of collections was not merely buckets to put books in (tags already did that) but buckets of books that do things.

Nice summary, eromsted!

136: *claps!* Perfect summary! I defiinitely agree. It's nice to be able to "group" books into Collections now, but Collections as a whole doesn't really do much yet.

so far, i'm using three categories: Your Library for stuff i physically own, wishlist for stuff i intend or seriously hope to own, and books read but not (now) owned. so these are all physical delimiters.

in fact, i tried folding in wishlists once before, just because i could, but i hated having it show up in Your Library, because hey it actually wasn't there, so after about a week i removed them all. a wishlist does not a collection make. My Library consists of what i choose to keep. now, it makes much better sense to add them, so i have: all three categories exist together in macha's brain, no doubt, but not in macha's house, and that's a nice clear division. and in return for keeping them separate, i get an actual bookcount of Your Library as equal to My Library Holdings rather than my Pie in the Sky intentions.

so, my wishlist category, though large, is easy to navigate via its own tags, which are category-oriented rather than subject-oriented. that is, genre fiction (i.e. "sf wishlist" tag), main fiction, non-fiction, poetry, graphic novels and suchlike are separated out, but there are no specific content tags cause i don't own the stuff yet.

and Read But Not Owned is a marvellous opportunity, but i think it could really benefit from some checkable sub-groups: Got It From the Library, and Borrowed From Someone, and Owned It Then But No Longer. i have books i've offloaded three times or more in a lifetime, for whatever reason: and if they keep drifting back, that says something about them too. which makes me start championing some vanity checkables, like maybe Alas Poor Yorick, and Kicked to the Curb, because in fact statswise that could tell us something useful about the longevity of the book's little life in our fickle but ruthless hearts. a set of intimate relationships: love/hate, enchantment/disenchantment, nostalgia/need. it's kinda neat to think of codifying that.

but those are playful propositions; the sober fact is that Read but Not Owned is a vital element of our Book History: a ghostly residue made up of everything we've read over, in my case anyway, a good long time. plus, as it happens, i have a journal record of when i read them that is complete for one ten-year period, and i've been keeping a similar record here in the last few years. so i could enter that data and generate off it a list of what i read in order of when i read it. pretty interesting, at least to me. plus which, if anyone else has a list, could get us into the dialogue realm of, 'hey i read that back in the dawn of time' vs 'hmph, you call that early?' fun with the carbon dating.*g*

and i'm now seriously thinking of making one more category: My Special Collections. right now some of that is going into My Library, and i do own them so that's not wrong. but the question remains: they are Paper, but are they Book? i'm thinking things like Magazines that are kept as a collection, and comic books (as opposed to published graphic novel/comic collections), and various ephemera. cataloging that stuff as a series of separate items has serious value, for both me and thee. and the recent innovation that allows more useful cataloguing of contributors, illustrators, and suchlike makes it easier to do. does that constitute a separate category of My Collections? still thinking, but maybe that's a yes. so that's a category i may yet choose to create.

reviews are still a puzzle. we need better access to good reviews, especially on books that haven't hit our radar. and we need to keep them, even where the book itself goes away (another usage for Read But Not Owned, that). but i'm not sure segregating them within collections is the best solution. it doesn't feel right to me, it needs a different plan. but meanwhile, tim and company, thanks for all the fish, and you're still my favorite intergalactic highway. long may you... rain. or you know, whatever.

Well, you could always tag the Read but not owned ones. :)

I'd say go with the 'various ephemera' paper-not-book collections, macha, why not? There seem to be a lot of things like the National Geographic Magazine on LT already, even if they have to be added manually and can lead to combining problems. I have entered opera programmes which at the moment are a sub-collection of My Library: maybe I should cut them free??

The other things (paper-not-books) I have - not yet on LT - are Ordnance Survey and Michelin road maps. The O/S maps do have ISBNs now, I believe. I feel a stand-alone Maps collection coming on.

#141 OS maps have had ISBNs for a while I think. Go for it, and hopefully contribute to the OS series :-) And thanks for the reminder to create my own maps collection!

I'm still playing around with what I want, but here is what I'm using so far:
Your library - For books that I consider mine, the ones that I actually own on my shelf and want things like recommendations based on.
LibriVox Books - books I've listened to on LibriVox
Read but unowned - pretty self explanatory
Children's Books - all my kids books
Owned - everything on my bookshelves, both children and adult books.

"Well, you could always tag the Read but not owned ones. :)"

i could, yeah. but it feels like those tags i would create (Library Books, Something Borrowed, and Previously Owned, as well as the vanities Kicked to the Curb, and Late Lamented) are actually a subgroup of the collection category, in which case as a menu structure that's where they oughter stay. and beyond the personal, seems like some of those potential sub-categories could combine eventually into a bit of a telling statistic in themselves.

I don’t really mind my Books Catalogued including both physical and potential books because my Your Library collection is pretty clearly the ‘real’ books, and I exclude my wishlist collections from it. It seems that most (nearly all?) people are using it this way, and it will become accepted that when you want to see what a person actually has on their shelves, you’ll look at their Your Library and not at their Books Catalogued.

That said, I’m concerned about the invisible books on my Wishlists doing real-book tricks. Say I own 5 books by Arthur O’Dangit and covet 3 more, but when I go to his author page and I see 8 green checks—that’s not right. I’ve seen the suggestion made that Wishlist (and Read Not Owned and suchlike?) should have a different color check, and I heartily second this. Also the invisible books probably shouldn’t skew the Books Shared figures—or at least not at Full Strength. They do represent Shared Interests though, so perhaps they should be given reduced value in the complex Members With Yer Books formula?

>145 Crypto-Willobie: I’ve seen the suggestion made that Wishlist (and Read Not Owned and suchlike?) should have a different color check, and I heartily second this.

Hear hear - join the the Purple-Check Posse for wishlisted books! (an LT lobbying group? do we have such a thing?)

I'm a new user, today being Day 4. I have gotten a fair bit of cataloging done this weekend, and have miles to go, but it occurred to me that I ought to have a better understanding of "What is a tag?" and "What is a collection?" It is honest to say - I have no CLUE about some of the associated features other users are talking about, let alone how to benefit from them.

I see that tags appear to be "what is this book to you?" - an idealogical approach to the individual works on my shelves. Most people seem to identify basic genres, ownership (for a household catalogue), or other utility formats that are highly personal.

I don't have a library / cataloging background, so I can't follow all of the chat on the nuances of classification or whatnot.

To answer the original question though, I have "My Library," which holds the vast majority of books, "Historical Reference" because I want this to become a significant subsection of my collection, and "Husband's" because I am so not into his military stuff, but perfectionism drove me to catalogue it anyway. I have every book tagged to facilitate my own potential search needs. I haven't done much with the other site collections, and I don't know whether I will or not. It depend entirely on how well I learn to use the tools the site offers, I guess! :D

Hi, LauraLivenspire! Welcome aboard!

If you are tagging to your own needs, you are doing it right. Whatever works for you is the right way to do it! People use them in a lot of different ways, and what one member needs is not the same as what another needs.

Collections are, on the whole, similar, but they are so new that people are still working out their ways to use them.

I have just finished separating out my wishlist and bookcrossed books from my library (the process reduced my library from 108 pages to 20 pages lol), so I now have:
All Collections:2,152
Favorites:0 (eventually, this will have all my books rated 4+)
Your Library:384
Wishlist:1,181
Currently Reading:1
To Read:161
Bookcrossed:596
Rings and Rays:20
Released in 2007:77
Released in 2008:474
Released in 2009:39
Read but Unowned:0

The subdvision of my bookcrossed books will never be more than three years (too much clutter), so when I start a "Released in 2010" collection, I'll delete "Released in 2007". This is why there is no "Released in 2006" collection lol.

Up until now I haven't kept my library books on here, but soon, I'll be adding "Read in 2007/2008/2009" etc, so there will be library books on the list and they will populate to the "read but Unowned" list :-)

Edited to add: I just love collections. Thanks so much to the team for all your hard work in bringing it to us!!!

Afraid I haven't had much use for collections yet (makes me a minority of one?).

May possibly add a "Current" collection, for books I'm currently using on some project or other.

I’ve seen the suggestion made that Wishlist (and Read Not Owned and suchlike?) should have a different color check, and I heartily second this.

Third that!!!

Also separate statistics for each collection would be great and could produce a lot of interesting data.( Would love to know which one of your collections has highest avg. rating, avg. date of publication per collection etc)

And I think I remember sth about this not being possible - sth to do with how All Collections works - (might be wrong) but it would be so great if wishlist did not count towards your total of books.

Also, I've noticed many people don't use the wishlist simply because to them "wishlist" means books they absolutely want to/will buy - so they have a separate collection for books they "want to investigate" or "maybe interested in" "check out" etc. Just trying to help but Isn't it easier to just use the wishlist for whatever purpose you want - (e.g. I use it for just books I've heard about that sounded interesting so I want to keep an eye on) and then just state on your profile what Wishlist means for you? Not everyone is using the same Collections in exactly the same way as everyone else anyway; there are subtle(or not-so-subtle) differences in what every person means by a certain collection.

ETA: about colour checkmarks: I think they should only be different for Wishlist as opposed to Your Library, not for all of the collections - otherwise it would be too much of a mess

I think it depends, girlunderglass, how one's mind works. Wishlist for me is more of a shopping list...I know, that's a fusty little distinction isn't it? And yeah, I have an Evaluating list as well. Ker-azy.

I'm amazed/confused/befuddled about all the pantys in a wad about labeling...what collection title appears where and how its used. Weird, man, weird. I mean, why can't it be sort of understood that we use the My Library thing as our physical books? They have to go somewhere, right? All Collections being everything in our personal universe...that seems reasonable. I just don't understand the twisting in the breeze over this.

Oh and the intersection of tags & collections - I feel the same as Tim about this. Generally collections don't cross the streams but tags do. I'm good with this. I just created RNO and now will go back & tag both RNO and ML books the same when I read them in the same year. Makes perfect sense to me. Two buckets with a shared attribute. I see nothing to agonize over here. But then again, it's still early.

>147 LauraLivenspire: Welcome, Laura!

I understand your confusion. When I first joined, I had no idea what to do with tags, and now as you've joined we have both tags and collections to play with.

You will develop your own system, but just as an idea, here's what I do.

I use tags to say something about the book itself. This is often a subject or theme, but sometimes is a format (e.g. graphic novel or manga).

I use collections to state "where" the book is in my world -- My Library are the books owned by my household. There's also Borrowed, and a few Removed collections (so I can track what I once owned and why I no longer do), and Inherited (to say how it came into our possession), and a few others.

The "@" tags correspond exactly to my collections, and were part of my work preparing the catalog for the release of the collections feature. I'll probably strip them out someday.

There's lots of other good approaches to using tags and collections here. This is just mine.

I might be in the minority but My Library does not just include books I own. I don't own a gazillion book, I borrow from the library, a lot. My Library is a library of books I have read, I tag to differentiate own vs library/borrowed - the tags now work as a subcategory. I don't need them to be a separate collection. I was never one who made a big fuss over using LT to only display my owned books. I started using LT as a great place to keep track of what I read. I do use wishlist and I have added my daughters books, and these are not part of My Library (they are in Her Library).

I don't think anyone should feel pressure to use any of the Collections any specific way, or at all. It's your library to sort/label/tag anyway that makes sense to you.

>154 sydamy: Agreed; I also use My Library for both owned and read books.

154, 155: same here

> 154, 155, 156: That's fine of course. You're free to use LT as you see fit. But I would put those books in "read but unowned".

>157 Nicole_VanK: agreed

>157 Nicole_VanK: I'm trying to avoid using more collections than I need just because they exist. If I split up Your Library into Owned and Read But Unowned, then I'd have to make a third collection of "All the books that are important to me", since that's what I actually want to look at almost all the time, and it just doesn't seem worth it--why have three collections, including two that I would barely use, when one tagged collection works just as well?

Two ready made categories for exactly the books people have and have only read and they do not make use of them. And after years of clamoring for collections that won't affect recommendations or connections. Mystifying.

>160 Bookmarque: I don't want the books that I've read but don't own to be excluded from recommendations.

And of course, the fact that some people were clamoring for collections doesn't mean that everyone was.

>159 _Zoe_: Well said! My library is, and has always been, a combination of my physical AND mental libraries. I have no real use for just seeing a list of books I don't own, so why bother to expend the effort to maintain the collection? (Although I did make a "books I can lend you" collection, mostly for the sake of being able to point friends to a simple thing rather than a complicated tag search permalink.)

>160 Bookmarque: Not everyone was clamoring for collections, despite how it may have seemed; the non-purists among us were quietly happy putting read-but-not-owned books into our main catalog with only tags to differentiate them. But, y'know, squeaky wheels and all that. :)

I think eromsted listed everything I'd like collections to do, but here's my essential-features list again (more modest than his):

--ability to exclude collections from stat totals

--ability to exclude connections and/or recommendations for certain collections (I thought we were getting this, but I can't tell of this is delayed or not working for good?)

Without this, there's nothing worthwhile to set them apart from tags.

I am in the "My Library = Books That I've Read" camp. These are the books that are important to me. This is my primary grouping. I don't want them separated out based on owned/not owned. If I used "My Library" as owned books, and "RNO" for unowned books, I would also need a third category for my "Books I Care About". It would be the union of My Library and RNO. I don't care to add that complexity.

I do want to separate out other categories, such as Wishlist or Kids Books. Collections is working very well for that.

161 I see no reason why you think that read but not owned is excluded. You can choose whether or not a collection is used for recommendations and I see no reason that read but not owned shouldn't be used. It is different if it is a wishlist book that you haven't read and as collections can overlap you can choose Read but unowned to be included and wishlist to be excluded. It is your choice.

> 159: Like I said, I'm sure that's fine too. But wouldn't "all collections" serve the purpose of "All the books that are important to me"?

But now I do understand your remark - I believe made in another thread - better, that you don't really see the difference between "all collections" and "your library". For me that difference is quite essential you see. For me "my library" is just that: MY library, the collection of books in my care. Just like I don't think every dollar I've ever handled is part of "my bank account" - alas ;-)

>165 calm: Yes, but there's no point in separating the books out unless I want them to be excluded.

>166 Nicole_VanK: The thing is, I don't want Wishlist books to be included in "All the books that are important to me". Like many people, I'm not so much interested in Wishlist as "Books I Want to Buy" as I am in Wishlist as "Books I've come across on LT that look interesting and may be worth considering later".

Also, there are a lot of childhood books that I still own but want to exclude from recommendations and connections, so that's another reason for keeping "Books that are important to me" distinct from "All Books".

For me All Collections and Your Library are just duplicates of each other.

167>

I disagree; for me, my catalog now has two purposes; I can track the books I own (which I've always done), and I can track books I've read but do not own. I want the latter to be included for recommendations, etc., but want it to be very clear that I don't actually own them. Collections work perfectly for me for this. Obviously, people less concerned with having a strong owned/not-owned separation won't care about keeping them separate for other purposes (and have probably been entering RNO all along.) I'm just trying to point out that some people do find value in having multiple "use for connections" Collections.

> 168: Yes, I see. It's simply an entirely different approach. My prime reason for using LT is managing my actual collection.

And I do understand about not wanting recommendations / connections to some books - in my case I find it's the comics that mess mine up.

> 169: Okay, for me they're not. I make every effort to exclude "read but unowned" and "wishlist" from "your library". I never even touched those until collections made that exclusion possible.

>172 Nicole_VanK: I totally get that. It's not the (primary) way I use LT, but I get it. What I think Zoe and I are mainly trying to point out is that people shouldn't assume that My Library = Books I Physically Own across the board... or that the advent of collections means that the stats of "members with a book" is going to start meaning "members who physically own a book" any more than it did before.

Circles within circles. Oy vey.

173>

Oh, of course; it was unclear to me whether _Zoe_ was saying "there's no reason for me to make this distinction" or "I don't understand why anyone would want to make this distinction".

This is starting to sound a bit like conflicts between orthodoxy and heresy in the early Christian church. I'm all for individuality but it seems to me that Tim's suggestion here -

http://www.librarything.com/topic/66482

is very pertinent. Those of us with public libraries who care about potential viewers would be helped by a facility to define our own take on Collections.

>172 Nicole_VanK: I definitely understand that a lot of people want to keep those things separate from Your Library, and I'm certainly not saying you should do anything differently. My main point was that it's not safe to make any assumptions about what "Your Library" means to other people.

I suggested adding two separate default collections--Owned and Main Collection--as a way to avoid the ambiguity, but Tim said it was too late to change the defaults.

>174 Bookmarque: What are you trying to say here?

>175 lorax: I was saying "there's no reason for me to make the distinction".

I see I was quite mistaken when I ventured that ‘It seems that most (nearly all?) people are using it this way, and it will become accepted that when you want to see what a person actually has on their shelves, you’ll look at their Your Library and not at their Books Catalogued.’ Many but certainly not all, maybe not most. In that case the idea put forth by Tim here http://www.librarything.com/topic/66482 (thanks, abbottthomas) that Collections (and perhaps Tags) be afforded a brief explanatory sentence seems like a great, almost necessary, idea. My ‘Your Library’ would then be followed by ‘Books that are actually on my shelves,’ and someone else’s ‘Your Library’ might be glossed ‘Books I have read, whether or not I currently own copies,’ and each to her own. Descriptions for Tags don’t seem to me to be so vital, as Tags can and often do contain their own glosses: ‘Ancient Greek History in paperback’ or ‘Publishing and Book History inherited from Grandpa’ or ‘Translated fiction, mostly French’ or what have you. I suppose a (new) Collection can also be discursively titled, but the Default Collections cannot and so they, especially Your Library, would greatly benefit from Explanations.

I've created an "Excluded from Social Data" collection for books I don't want to affect my LT Recommendations, etc. I reserve this for things that aren't just bad, but insultingly bad. As in, whatever editor (or acquisitions committee) gave this the go-ahead should be fired.

Yeah, it's annoying to have to exclude the books in that collection from all other collections to keep them "covert." But I understand the difficulties in handling it differently.

"Your Library" for me is only the collection of my reference books (58) so using Your Library for statistics is meaningless as far as my account is concerned. The remainder of the books that I have read are in my "READ" collection, then there are books that I borrowed from the library that are in user defined collections (MCL) and the RBU, well that's the books that I have sold or donated because they truly are read but unowned. As for WISHLIST, that's a collection of the books that I know that I want to read whether borrowing them from the library or buying them from the bookstore. Books that I have not decided whether I really want to read or not are in the "Books to Investigate" collection. Once I make a definitive decision about them, I will move them to Wishlist or delete them altogether.

In essence my account is a combination of READ, TO READ, WISHLIST, and READ BUT NOT OWNED collections. Your library doesn't even make the top 5.

I appreciate the check boxes for removing collections from Recommendations and Connections, but I would also like to be able to remove these collections from showing up on my profile page as recently added and from appearing on work pages as books I own (because these are collections of books I don't own). Is this possible? Can we have this option?

The collection I am specifically thinking of is my Books to Investigate collection.

and from appearing on work pages as books I own (because these are collections of books I don't own). Is this possible? Can we have this option?

Yeah this has been requested I think and it makes sense because obviously I don't own my wishlist books. This problem could be solved with the different-coloured checkmarks for different collections: if ONLY "Your Library" would be green checkmarks and then you could assign a purple checkmark to all your wishlists (books to investigate, etc) and say, a red one, to collections like "stinkers" "chucked" "hated" etc. - that would be great!

I agree with 182.

181: Turn off "connections" for "Books to investigate"; that should help with the recently added aspect.

#183, I have "connections" turned off for "Books to Investigate" and they still appear on the Recent Activity section of my profile. (All the books currently listed there are Books to investigate.)

I know I could remove the Recent Activity section from my profile, but I would rather not, if I could be sure that only books I've really acquired show there or if the books listed there also included the collection to which they were added.

The power of peer pressure. I had been using "My Library" for the books I'd read, regardless of ownership. I just reorganized, using "My Library" only for books I currently own and a new collection "Have read" for everything I've read, regardless of ownership.

I am still not using RNO. I can derive this from the negative intersection of "My Library" and "Have Read". To me, this is far preferable to using "My Library" and RNO, and having to derive read-regardless-of-ownership.

184: Hmm. Adding the collection name sounds like a good compromise. :)

#181, #182, #184 I had asked for the option to keep wishlist books separate, and it didn't go over well.

Not sure what the problem is because if the privacy option is ever implemented, which Tim has now defined as being book level, by definition those books will not show up with any of the others.

I think the different colored check would be good, though I think if there are too many different ones, it will get cluttered and confusing.

I also would like to see collection labels added for books being added on the home page and the recent activity on the profile.

#187 I don't want to make my Books to Investigate collection private, in that I want other people to be able to view it as a collection. I just don't want it included in places that would imply that I own the books in the collection.

188 I realize that, I am just saying that if books are OK to be separated from the herd because they are private, they should be OK to be separated because you don't own them.

In the first case others wouldn't see them, in the 2nd they would be in their own collection that others could see.

By the very nature of it's title "Books to Investigate" I highly doubt anyone would think they were owned. Also it seems that My Library is going to be understood as books owned. And thirdly, if you put a note in your profile denoting what collections are what you will triply prevent misunderstanding, which I can't really understand being such a threat anyway.

>189 FicusFan: I've come to think that the eventual privacy feature is the best hope for my Wishlist, even though I don't actually want it to be private.

>190 Bookmarque: I think there's still a significant group of users planning to use My Library for books that they've read as well as books that they own.

But more importantly, I don't think most users are going to bother with the distinctions of collections when looking at other people's catalogues. A lot of people will just go directly to All Collections, without displaying the collections column, and will have no idea what books are owned and what books have been read and what ones are just there because they're worth investigating.

it seems that My Library is going to be understood as books owned.

Not necessarily. The best would be if we have the 2-3 different colours for checkmarks (not more than that, I agree with FicusFan at 187) but we are given the possiblity to choose which checkmark to assign to which collection - with the understanding that each means a different thing.

For example if we come to an agreement that

green checkmark = own
yellow checkmark =read
purple checkmark = want to buy/check out/investigate

then you could assign the green checkmarks to whichever collection holds the books you own, whether that is "your library" or not etc
similarly you could assign the purple checkmark to collections that hold books you are interested in but don't own, whether those are "wishlist", "books to investigate" or anything like that.

Of course this is all hypothetical, I have no idea if it would be difficult to code - and I don't think Tim & co have even answered to whether they think the coloured checkmarks are a good idea.

ETA to add the "read" checkmark, the "read" and "own" chekamrks obviously do not exclude one another so if you have both read AND own a book they will both show on the left of the book. Does that sound complicated?

oy vey. I merely said it SEEMED to be going to be understood by the fact that it's an obvious and literal interpretation of the words My Library.

Do whatever you want folks...but it seems needlessly complicated and fussy to me when there are allocations predefined for exactly the type and status of the books being shoved into My Library and the fact that you can define other categories as well.

there are allocations predefined for exactly the type and status of the books being shoved into My Library and the fact that you can define other categories as well.

yes but when you go to an author's page for example it still shows (with checkmarks) that you own/have read the book when you merely have it in your wishlist.

Anyway - completely off-topic but is anyone else having trouble with widgets? I have two widgets from LT on my blog and neither have been working for some hours. They seem to have disappeared.

I'm not sure how leaving most books in the default collection is "needlessly complicated" and "fussy". It's actually a lot less fiddly than separating everything out into different collections.

191 Yes if book privacy ever appears.

It seems to me to have the same principle - separating books out of All Collections, that Tim doesn't accept (they may still be there, but to browsers they will not be visible -effectively separating them).

So I am not sure how it will come to pass, unless those asking for privacy are considered to be making a constructive request, while those wanting wishlist separation are not.

But they would still be in all collections - just have a different colour :)

It seems pretty clear that privacy requests are considered reasonable and constructive, while wishlist separation requests are considered ridiculous and destructive. I'm not sure why that's the case, but it is. So privacy will eventually be implemented, and should be able to be used for wishlist separation, though at the cost of having a private wishlist.

>198 girlunderglass: Well, private books would presumably not appear in All Collections, or that would sort of defeat the purpose. So ideally wishlist books could be hidden as well.

I thought you were talking about colored checks on the work page for the book and so on, not in the catalog view.

I don't think I want any fiddly checks in my catalog view. That would be another column and then something else would have to come out, if you were already at the max.

>199 _Zoe_:: It does appear so. Although I don't understand why - it seems like a very reasonable request to me: You want to collect all the works of, say, Neil Gaiman - you've read almost all of them and put the rest on your wishlist - so you go to Neil Gaiman's page to see which ones you still need to buy and what does it show you? That you have all his works already. Now isn't that a bit silly?

ETA: 201: I was talking about the work and author pages - not the catalog view.

yes but when you go to an author's page for example it still shows (with checkmarks) that you own/have read the book when you merely have it in your wishlist.

coding does not happen magically. The developers have it on their list.

190 I certainly agree that if people SEE that some of my books are in a collection "Books to Investigate" they will understand what that means. The problem is that there are places where they DON'T see that information (e.g., Recent Activity on my profile, Work pages where it seems that I own a book I don't) and therefore have no way of knowing that these books are ones I want to investigate rather than ones I own. Hence my suggestion either to provide collection info in those places or allow one to remove certain collections from appearing there.

As for why it is such a "threat," one of the beauties of LT is that we can each define, tag, collect, etc. books (or other items) any way we like -- we don't all have to agree about what's important. I'm just trying to extend that flexibility and personalization a little further.

>203 Bookmarque: have they said that they'll do it? If so I'll stop trying to argue the merits of the suggestion and wait patiently. :) If not, well, I guess we can only keep trying...

193 I agree with that type of logic and would really like to have it, at least on certain pages. I have a slightly different interpretation of the markings that I'd like to offer.

My problem is that I'd like to move my book list trackings (say Hugo award-winning books) off of www.listsofbests.com over here. As it stands, all books, no matter which category they're found in, mark off the item in Common Knowledge / author pages / and so on. There are plenty of books that I own that I haven't read yet, so it would throw me off to see them marked in the list the same way as read books.

I know people have different types of interpretations of the collections, but it would be nice to offer this so I could move to using this site more exclusively.

>206 ryan.adams: Your post made me think, it would be really nice to have a default Read collection and user-created lists, so that LT could essentially duplicate all the functionality of listofbests.com....

205/207: I've seen Tim say colored checkmarks are planned in a different thread, and he mentioned lists at another point without much detail.

>207 _Zoe_: That'd be ok, although the only user-created lists over there I've ever created was to track books/movies read/watched in a certain year. Here, so long as I'm able to distinguish one collection from another in those lists, I'd be happy with having a custom Read collection.

I probably would keep using listsofbests, though, because of their support for tracking other forms of media (like the IMDB Top 250).

#196 - no more than tags are, perhaps, but the permutations of "I want a Pony" are hilarious. Eschewing the begged for functionality so swiftly. Ah Tim...how large your tub of valium must be.

>208 infiniteletters: I've seen Tim say colored checkmarks are planned in a different thread

That's great! Add me to the ranks of those clamouring asking for wishlist separation.

# 210, In case you missed it, Tim has been popping into various threads and asking people what they want in addition to what has been done.

My impression is that what we have with collections is a base that he can build functionality onto. {sarcasm} And of course he would be just plain foolish to build something users might actually want {sarcasm off} Furthermore many functions of the site have been constructed based on user input.

Tim has even gone so far as to suggest that maybe there should be a wishlist for every collection. I have seen it several times, and he did not appear to be joking.

He has said he likes some ideas, and doesn't like others, at no point has he said stop the ideas.

No one is saying that we expect a magic wand to be waved, and everything to be granted and/or in place immediately.

Ridiculing brainstorming is perhaps fun for those who like to take potshots at others, and have nothing useful to contribute.

Checkmarks discussed here: http://www.librarything.com/topic/66496

I've added one called "Free Range" for books I have listed on swap sites and also books that I keep duplicate copies of so that I can loan them out. My theory is that it will help me differentiate deliberate duplicates from accidental ones.

Oh ho. Looks like I ruffled some feathers. You might call it brainstorming, but it looks like bitching to me. After all the years of drama around collections to immediately start picking it apart and pointing out all the things it doesn't do when it's barely a week old seems like ingratitude to me.

213: thanks for the link, I had missed that

I think we need a moratorium on ponies. The reference is demeaning to those who are adding their input to improve the site and adds nothing to the debate. And it's completely subjective. I'm sure some of the pony-ists have some ideas for features they would like that to others seem useless. So, feel free to shoot down others ideas if you must but please give actual reasons instead of taking the easy way out.

>217 jjwilson61: Yes, please for a moratorium on ponies. Reading RSI is getting pretty tedious.

>215 Bookmarque: Who's the one bitching here? As far as I can tell, your comments are the least constructive by far. You seem to have no interest in engaging in a real discussion, and have mostly restricted yourself to random negative comments that aren't even based on fact.

For example, you ignored the responses to your initial comments, and just waited a while to say essentially the same thing again: the permutations of "I want a Pony" are hilarious. Eschewing the begged for functionality so swiftly. Ah Tim...how large your tub of valium must be. Let me repeat, not everyone has been begging for this functionality. Are you actually incapable of understanding that, or do you just enjoy trying to ruffle feathers by making untrue or misleading statements?

And we have a condescending lecture from Zoe. I was wondering how long she could keep from that soapbox. Not long enough. I think Tim needs to share.

215/218/219: How about discussion instead please?

>220 infiniteletters: That's what I was hoping for initially. But I can only say the same thing so many times (see #160, 161, 162, etc. Then 174 and 210).

No, I was not eagerly begging for collections.
My choice not to use the "Read But Unowned" collection isn't asking anything from Tim; I don't see where the pony comes in.

I'm not sure how the discussion can continue under the premise that any suggested changes are "bitching". Fortunately there are other threads.

Yeah, I have to object in the most strenuous terms to terms like "bitching." It's demeaning personally, and it's really unhelpful. Criticism of that sort is helpful. There's no question that Zoe and I don't see eye to eye on a number of issues—I won't lie and say I look forward to it all the time—but I've tried to listen and, on not a few occasions, I've made changes that, I think, are best for everyone, in part because of her comments. I would really hate if those comments went away.

You don't have to read anyone's posts. I don't either, I suppose, but I'm paid to do it and I—and the site—benefit from it.

Anyway, let's take it up a notch, and at least avoid terms like that. This isn't Pro and Con.

I still object strenuously to the term Pony.

Anyway, let's take it up a notch,

In the spirit of elevation, I apologize for being cranky to Bookmarque. I was angry when I posted, and should have cooled down before posting.

Onto the actual subject ....

I have added a Read 2008 collection, I usually compare one year's reading to another. I am not sure when 2009 becomes last year's reading if I will keep the 2008 collection, or add a Read collection and move it into there and only keep 2 years separated out. I have a while to ponder before I have to make a decision.

Helcura, I love the title Free Range for a collection. I don't have such a thing, but you make me wish I did so I could steal it and use it.

I use Your library for what I've read, am reading, and/or own. Wishlist is separate. I've created an Ordered collection for books in transit (both in the mail and between Wishlist and Your library).

I have two interest-themed collections. These are useful when putting the same tags on books that are loosely connected would be awkward or inaccurate. I may make more. They are distinguished by ending in Thing.

When I understood that connections and recommendations worked by inclusion, I made two new collections, a "core" collection for all the books that matter (by no means everything from the themed collections; those have their own boxes to check and uncheck whenever I want to), and an "interesting" collection for recommendations. These I have called Centre and Circumference. I also use Favorites, as a subset of Centre.

I've added collections that denote kind of my-book-ness, all mutually exclusive: Hardcopy, Virtual (phantom books I've added that live in owned omnibus editions), Audio, Get-at-able, Unowned, and Nonbooks (whose presence here I justify by their ISBNs and/or book-relatedness, or excuse by their partaking of one of my book-driven interests).

The remainder is still in the experimental phase. I keep thinking of names for collections I'm not sure would be of real use to me. "Ditchlist" for books I wish to become Unowned? "To Heckmondwike" for every "book I do not like"?

I try to keep the names short, because I use the collections column in most viewing styles.

I use collections for sorting by genre, and tags for things like 'to be read' and 'school'. Your Library has all the books I own, and Wishlist the rest. I don't catalogue RNO, and I deactivated Favourites as well (my five star ratings are enough, and I dislike seeing books from different genres together). I do use the Currently Reading collection, though.

I love collections for allowing me to physically separate my library into mutually exclusive sub-groups. ^^

I have put all the books I own into 'your books', but excluded from that the ones that my son and husband own that I would never read. 'MJ' is the combination of that and 'Read but not owned'. Suddenly I have a bunch of people borrowing books from us, so I've had to create an 'owned fiction' category to give them a place to search the regular fiction, the science fiction, ... only bringing up books we own so they can request books.

If this develops more I'll have to finally finish the fiction and start my husband's suspense collection. (the Science Fiction is in Steven's room, so both mine and his got catalogued together, but since the suspense is in separate bookcases that I never use, I haven't done those yet.

Some general points.

1). I started reading this thread because I thought it would be interesting to see how people are using, and more importantly, thinking about collections. Especially in relation to tags.

2) Whilst suggesting possibilities for further development or areas where collections doesn't quite work how you want are interesting it would have been best to put those on a separate thread on RSI.

Now on the first point.

Although I don't use collections yet it seems to me that I will use them where there is a difference in the relationship I have to a book. Do I own it? Do I want to own it? Have I read it from the library? Have I ripped it up and fed it to my dog? That kind of thing.

Using collections in lieu of tags seems deeply odd to me. Personally I think the free tagging that LT has has been a great success and feel that some of the tools that work of that mass (or mess - your choice) of tags are great. Anything that drives people away from tagging, or which causes people to remove otherwise useful tags makes me sad.

Thinking some more I might be tempted to have a collection to catalogue individual short stories that I have 'archived' for later reading from various online websites. At the moment I do not catalogue them at all on LT.

Fiction, Non-fiction, short stories, books about books. That's only so far and it's meant moving those groups from tags. My biggest problem is deciding what should be a collection and what should be a tag. Then again, I'm aware that I have many tags that should really be just notes so maybe I need to do something about that too. I'm dithering about the wishlist one as I don't nromally catalogue anything that I haven't owned so that would mean a whole new mindset for me. Also, my wishlist changes - something I desparately wanted a month ago I might not fancy by now. Hmmmm, I'll have to think about that one - anyone have anything to say for or against?

229: Use wishlist for the books you desperately want, until you don't fancy them any more. :)

>222 timspalding: Thanks, Tim.

>228 andyl: andyl I totally agree with you. I still rely heavily on my tags - sort of like subcategories. If I want to see my fiction books, I open My Library and then search on fiction. I don't quite grasp why it needs to be its own collection. But I'm not going to think any worse if someone does want it separate. It's their library and their time, go wild.

If you want the books not included in recommendations or connections, I get it, otherwise, ...

I was not one who was waiting anxiously for collections, but I am glad its here. I like currently reading, and wishlist. My kids books are separate, which is nice but, I was living just fine before. I just found tagging to be more useful, than dividing up my library into smaller libraries.

#232

Yeah splitting out your kid's books fits in exactly with what I was saying - it is a different type of relationship with the book. If I had children I would split out their books in to their own collections too.

>232 sydamy:/3

Good idea! Bye-bye Mr. Men and Thomas the Tank Engine, but I think Swallows and Amazons, Winnie the Pooh and, of course, Alice will stay with the grown-ups.

Similarly I have put all my comics in a separate collection, and disabled recommendation / connections there and on the main library. Love them all the same, but seeing people with whom I share some 50 Asterix and Tintin books, but very little else, in my most similar libraries... My connections and recommendations have improved considerably.

I agree about the recommendations. I never looked at them before because there were way too many books I already had. Now its almost perfect (the omnibus editions sneak through - but that isn't LT's fault).

Great improvement !

>234 abbottthomas: That is when it is nice that a book can belong to more than one collection, Alice, Pooh bear, Harry Potter and as she gets older many more books can be in My Library and Daughters Library. She is also using her Library for all books read, owned or library and she just tags appropriately. Her wishlisted books, are just under the main Wishlist collection with a tag indicating it's wishlist for Daughter.

I don't want to start up an old argument, but if anyone would like to contact me off-thread to explain what all that 'pony' stuff was about I'd be very happy to be enlightened. I only understand about 30% of what goes on here!

Thanks for explanation_Zoe_. I didn't know what was going on either.

You're welcome :)

Ditto. Thanks to everyone who replied to that. I feel like I finally got bumped into the 21st century!

What new collections?

Because the new collections feature does not allow for sub-collections, I divided my category sections using certain asterisked collection titles as category dividers. (In order to make the category label show up on my profile, a book had to be entered into those collections. If you're looking there, just disregard the book entered into collections that have asterisks in their names. They are only there to force the label to show up.)

These are my categories:

*****OWNERSHIP DIVISIONS*****
My Library (owned)
Wishlist (do not include in ‘my library’)
Litwish Prospects (books to investigate before adding to wishlist) (not in ‘my library’)
Gone (tags: loosed, discarded, returned) (not in ‘my library’)
Inclusions (tagged for their omnibus, collection, etc) (do not include in ‘my library’)

*****IMPRESSIONS*****
Favorites
Nostalgia
Reviewed

*****PASSIONS*****
Pansy
Pansy Family
Pansy Peers
Lothrop
GLH
Chautauqua
Cookbooks

*****FOR MAINTENANCE PURPOSES*****
Loaned Out
Unable to locate
Uncollected
All collections - Athenaeum countrylife (my entire book world)

I wasn't one of the ones hollering for collections but I will say I've played around a bit. I'm a little afraid to put my entire wishlist in because it would just be ridiculously huge and I presently have it spread out between betterworld, bookmooch and amazon. I did put some of the ones I think have the highest priority in what I want and subcatagorized using the tags "low, medium and high".

I'm also putting my library books into the "read but unowned" collection but am not entirely sure I'll go back and re-do them all. We'll see. I'm still using the "library" tag for library books.

242> That isn't really what I would call sub-categories, it's more like organizing your categories, which Tim might be more willing to do.

242> Very much sounds like the meta-thinking collections leads to.

41 > > PhaedraB

If you put your wishlist on LibraryThing I'll buy you a book ;)

Well, Tim, as of this morning, I have 45 books in the Wishlist collection :-)

I actually use collections more than I thought I would, especially considering I didn't think I needed or wanted Collections. Heresy, I know.

However, I've found them especially handy for dispensing with non-content tags, such as "packed" or "verify cover." I have also created "Reference" and "Fiction," although I'm less certain of the utility of those as collections rather than tags. I do still have a lot of location tags such as "@box29" or "@kitchen" (mostly cookbooks) or--my current favorite--"@large," 'cause it seems like 40 separate collections for 60 books or less seems a bit much.

Did I mention I now have a wishlist?

>246 PhaedraB:

Someday.

247 > Two weeks?

I just created a Reading Unknown collection. I have some books that I don't know if I read them or not.

I would have to find them in the apartment, and then spend some with them to see if I did read them, skimmed them, or gave up. So for now I am just going to leave them as Unknown.

> Reading Unknown

Don't you find that depressing? I'd rather lie to myself than that.

No. It is more peaceful to make a decision (even if its not really one) than to keep wrestling back and forth in my mind, did I or didn't I.

I have dealt with the problem and can move on to other things.

>136 eromsted:

I think LT would have to use Google's computers for all of that.

250> I have a bunch of books tagged _R1, which means that I think (or know) I read them but can't remember anything about them. Can't rate them, let alone review them. It's occasionally helpful.

>41 timspalding: I take it that's a one person only offer? :-) I actually did load my Amazon wishlist into LibraryThing, but I don't need the recommendations and connections, nor the detailed library cataloging, so I deleted all the books I added.

My new collections are Electronic Books, In Shipping, and "Reviewed, not Kept".

I keep Your Library for everything that I own hardcopies of, with Electronic Books for all the ebooks I bought copies of. Read but Unowned is probably going to see more use; right now it's just filling in holes in Rex Stout and friends, so I don't order something I've already read until I've read everything in the series. Wishlist is primarily used for things I found on LT and thought I needed a copy of. In Shipping has been on and off; the biggest issue I have it is that when I add a book to In Shipping it doesn't appear as a new entry when I finally get it. I might as well wait to catalog until I actually have the book in my own two hands.

Read but Unowned doesn't participate in connections, as that keeps the connections to books I actually care enough to own (sic!), but it does participate in recommendations; In Shipping is both connections and recommendations, and Reviewed, not Kept is neither.

I thought Bookmarque's idea of a childhood collection was a such a good one, as I've started hunting down old favourites of mine. I wanted a comprehensive list of those I remembered to help with my search, and because some have taken so long to remember that I don't want to forget them again! I've found the best way is to use my "Wishlist" collection, and tag them under "Nostalgia", the same tag I use for those I've read. So all my childhood faves can be browsed using the "Nostalgia" tag, but I can separate wishlisted and read ("My Library" is really my reading list/diary - I see no point in listing books I own).

I've added:

GENEALOGY, which includes not only actual genealogy books, which I have tagged as such, but all books which I consider part of my genealogy collection, including general histories of towns, atlases, etc. IOW, the collection I would want someone else to keep together if they inherited my genealogy work.

PRINT and KINDLE/OTHER, to separate out the books I have or have read in hard copy and those in other formats (mostly electronic)

REFERENCE, for books I don't expect to read but use as resources. These include books which are tagged as actual reference, but also non-reference books which I own and use for reference purposes only.

ABANDONED (thanks to sjmccreary above, who suggested this), for books I haven't finished and won't be reviewing. I keep notes on why I didn't finish them in the private comments area of my catalog.

I've added a few and intend to add a few more:
Fernie (Boyfriend's books)
The Boys (My sons' books)
Removed (books I've owned at one point in time but have recycled, donated, or sold)
Lost (Books I know I own, but haven't a clue who's borrowed them-books currently on loan are tagged as such)
Off the grid (Books I want to have with me if the world ends-don't ask LOL)
Early Reviewer

>257 kaelirenee: - I'm planning an "Off the grid" collection myself - I was thinking I'd call it "TEOTWAWKI" but that would be confusing as the tag by the same name is used for post-apocalyptic fiction...so I'm stealing yours!

:) Yeah, the off the grid is mostly for WTSHTF kind of stuff, but that just sounds far too militant for me. Maybe I should just call it my Preparedness collection-though that's the tag I use for most of them.

So, does anyone know what the actual status is of the different colored checkmarks for wishlisted titles?

I'm hesitating adding any more to my gigantic wishlist until I can tell them apart from the others...

> 260
"We'll get to doing the checkmarks as soon as we can." - conceptDawg (yesterday)

http://www.librarything.com/topic/70266#1434705

You'll notice that two of the home page modules now have checkmarks. We'll do other colored checks soon too. It's just a matter of finding time to step through all of the code and making it happen.
Oh, and also continuing development of new features. :)

Yes, but they are still all green, which means I still can't tell if I have a copy, or if I want a copy.
(My memory isn't brilliant.)

Will there also be a way of distinguishing wishlist titles on our profile page list of most recent activity?

And will there be a way of designating other collections to have a distinctive check? I ask because I use a different collection for "Books to investigate" and I would like also to be able to distinguish these books from those I own?

ETA For my purposes, the distinctive check could be the same pink one used for wishlist; I just would like to clearly separate owned from unowned books.

264: I agree; it would be nice to designate more than 1 collection for the nongreen checkmarks.

Tim mentioned that he was going to give us a way to make multiple collections into wishlists; I suppose that'll take care of the colour of the checkmarks for those other books.

Haha, I tried to read most of these posts so I don't repost but I got half way and then had to stop!

My Collections (776)
Your Library (495)
Read but Unowned (160)
Currently Reading (3)
To Read (129)
Wishlist (134)

My only issue is that I seem to be unable to delete or rename the Collections... I looked at the official Wikipage and did exactly what they said... so I have account issues or personal issues in which im dumb or blind lol

The collections you listed in 267 are all preset LT collections which cannot be either renamed nor deleted. They can be deactivated. But you can create any number of new collections within the Collections Manager and name them or rename them as you like.

v

Thank you for clearing that up for me!

Pleasure :)

v

But take note that the preset collections can have special abilities that collections that you create to replace them with won't have. For example, your books that are in your Currently Reading collection will be factored into the Books Members Are Reading module on the homepage and it's been suggested that in the future they may appear on your profile,

Collections
*Bücherei (49), local library
*Bücherei-Leihverkehr (44), regional catalogue
*Fernleihe (81), national catalogue
*Kaufen (11), to buy
*Büchereivorschlag (9), library proposal
#aus der Stadtbücherei (41), from local library
#Bookcrossing (14),

My collections are strictly "organisational". They help me in managing my library and wishlist. Content-related stuff is still managed through tags ("history, Lit. Iceland, childrens book, howler, war").

The *-collections are my Library collections: My wishlisted books are filtered through the local, regional and national library portal catalogues, and put in the respective "order from" collection, before they get placed on the to buy list or on the proposal list for the local library. Stops me from impulse or binge book-buying ;-). Every book I get interested in is put on the wishlist first.

The #-collections denote "books read, but not in my possession" by source (library, bookcrossing).

I might have to add a collection "purged" soon, since I am currently reducing my Unread collection (which has 184 books in it, yikes).