What's the Real power of Collections?

Maybe I haven't gone deep enough, but my experience with Collections is that it doesn't really add much to the longtime Tag system. As far as I see, Collections is just a way to subdivide your books, which Tags already did quite well. Or am I missing a lot here? Could someone explain the Real power of Collections to me? Thanks!

I find it useful. I mainly use tags to distinguish my books by genre and content; I use collections because I do actually collect some specific series like Folio Books, the Orion SF and Fantasy Masterworks, Viragos. I also use it to identify to read, to re-read, have read, Kindle edition status. One can use tags to do all that but I am glad I do not have to. I find it sweet to be able to go to my To Read collection and then see listed under that the content and genre tags for further drill down and easy selection.

For me, the main advantage of Collections is that it makes it clear from my profile page which books I consider my library (in my case, the ones I own), and which are extras. I would still like to see more distinction throughout the site to indicate unowned/wishlist books - like different coloured checkmarks.

The ability to turn off recommendations for selected collections is useful too.

I think the main functional difference is the ability to define the effect a given collection has on your recommendations and connections. You can tag a bunch of books "books I hated" if you like, but if you make a "books I hated" collection you can keep those books from generating recommendations you are likely to hate, and matching you up with people you might not have much in common with.

Likewise, the "currently reading" collection and "wishlist" collection are used to generate site-wide data on what people are reading and want to read, while tags to the same effect are not.

Otherwise tags and collections are functionally similar, and I am just continuing to use my tags.

It allows me to retain books on LT that I have reviewed but no longer own, without having them mixed in with the books that I do own.

Also keep in mind that Collections is still a work in progress. Tim and Chris have said that they're planning to apply it to other portions of the site.

I think the main difference is that the UI is different. You select the collection to view using a drop-down in the catalog which enforces the idea that these are really different groups of books.

Of course the decision to allow a book to be in more than one collection dilutes this idea. That decision was necessary to allow Currently Reading to be a collection, but I never agreed with the idea that that particular problem should be handled through collections anyway.

I find it also interesting and useful to be able to look at the tags for just one group of books; but the main thing is, as jlelliott said, the ability to remove a set of books from recommendations and connections.

Collections are a tool - you use it if you find it usefull. Right now the ability to fine-tune my recs/cxns is the most interesting to me. I also like the ability to make a collection active/inactive (I'm really rather "anti" the current position of the All Collections link - but I can't have everything.)

If we get different colored checks for Wishlist (or other) collections - as has been requested - that will be MAJOR for me. (I think that Tim et al. are thinking up "special" functions for some of the default collections - no idea what/when but curious.)

Also, I'm watching to see how I sort by my current tags - if I find myself frequently sorting by some complicated combinations/exclusions of tags that is a candidate for for a new collection for me.

I'm also thinking of using them to highlight groups of my books that others might be interested in looking at when they go to my profile page, for instance" Favorites / Anti-Favorites / Books available for sale/mooch/trade .

Yeah you could go to my tags and see if I even use tags like this (I don't use them often enough that they show up on my profile where the most-used tags do) but this puts those groups of books front and center on my profile. (Without me having to make lists or links to take up space on the profile page itself and forcing you to see the whole list - you can click of you want to/ or not).

"Tags and Collections: Fighting Chaos Together"

I have to admit I thought I would use collections a lot more then I am.

I am finding, like the OP, that Collections really isn't doing anything for me that tags don't do. I'm not one of those people who need their unowned or unread books seperate, and I think that's one of the main functions of Collections.

Just my opinion.

For me:

Collections are "more separate" than tags. Tags never gave adequate separation for me to feel happy entering wishlist or RNO books, and collections do -- I can happily browse "Your Library" most of the time, but have my wishlist and RNO there when I want them, without always needing to have a "tag:-wishlist tag:-unowned" specifier in the search at all times (besides, given the brokenness of multi-parameter search, this would have been basically useless in practice). Others, who may not have the tag column viewable or choose to search that way, can also easily distinguish in my library which books I do not own.

I use tags for content and format (paperback, hardback, graphic novel). I use collections for content-agnostic things: read status, ownership status.

If you're just replicating your tagging scheme with collections, then no, they aren't all that different. And in fact the lack of multi-parameter collection searches (if you have a "science fiction" collection and an "unread" collection, you can't see the overlap easily) makes them less well-suited for that sort of thing than tags.

I thought that I'd only use Collections for owned versus unowned, but I find it much more useful than that. As I move books in and out of my collections very often, it helps me logically, not only place where a book is in terms of my collections, but how I handle it and where I want it to go. You'll have to see my Collections list to understand this better.

However, I still use tags in the same way as before, although I no longer use TBR as a tag (I still have to delete many of those tags) and have eliminated a few other tags that seems more appropriately used as a Collection name. I think that tags that say "loaned to others", "TBR", or "daughter's collection" have no real use in a tags aggregate/cloud. Those really are better names for collections.

For me, the distinction is this:

Tags are properties of the book: I can decide all the tags I'll use just by picking up the book and looking at it. Things like: science fiction, mountaineering, signed, hardback, true love, high adventure.

Collections are things external to the book, things you can't tell by looking at the book itself: Your Library, Borrowed, David's, Wishlist, To Read.

A book can move between collections, but tags will always be true.

I can't claim that this is the way they're intended to be used, but I do find that the design of the site seems to work very well with the way I use tags vs. collections.

(Don't inspect my library and tell me that I'm not consistent with this statement. I know, I know -- I have a bookmooch tag and a Mountaineering collection. But hey, "a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds".)

I like Collections more than I thought I would, mostly because it is ~my~ view of my library. Looking at a Work, I often see that a book (a Biography, or an historical account, for example) has tags of both Fiction and Non-fiction. Granted, there are plenty of works of historical fiction, and there are lots of biographies of fictitious people, but really -- how is it that one can't make that distinction? (*He steps down from his off-topic soap box.*)

I've got over 2,500 unique tags, but (so far) I've got only 17 collections. Just last night, MrsHouseLibrary had lots of questions about a certain set of books that I had already had put into a separate Collection. She rarely asks me about the books on our shelves (except for "where is insert-title-here? ), so it was a treat to merely click on the Collection name rather than have to load n pages of sorted tags and find one that would apply to all of those books, plus any others that also shared that tag.

As I said in another thread, I'm hoping for a Boolean Search feature using Collections.

I use both tags and collections. I still use the TBR tag, because then I can cross check the numbers and make sure they are the same, which means that the books are in the right place (TBR should equal To Read). So my main collections have a corresponding tag ( except My Library and All Collections - which contain all my books).

I find the collections are useful as a predefined sort of something: read 2009. I can get the same from a tag search, but if its in the collection its already there without having to wait for the search.

Thanks guys and gals, for all your replies. From what I read, I conclude that I didn't miss all that much. Collections are "just" a more specified sort-of-tags. The name, "Collections", is an invitation to use it mainly for "external" characteristics, but those could also have been entered in the tags. I thought I completely misunderstood the concept, because the whole Collections thingy had been hanging in the pipeline for sooooo long and everybody was so full of expectations, so when it was finally there, I thought it would have been a true revolution. It is not, sadly. It's neat, it's nice, but it's not tremendously different from what LT was before.

A true revolution Would be, however, a solid way to query your database in a mature way: "Search all books with an author beginning with G which have more than 200 pages and which do not contain the word 'Collection' or 'Great Expectations' in the title", that sort of thing... I guess we'll have to wait for that. I know, I know, LT is a mixture of everything, database, social site, etc. Oh well, I just hope the database aspect gets some more attention, one day.

I use Collections much in the same way as rorrison (13) does. To me, Collections are broad while Tags are specific.

16>

"Search all books with an author beginning with G which have more than 200 pages and which do not contain the word 'Collection' or 'Great Expectations' in the title", that sort of thing... I guess we'll have to wait for that.

I think you'll be waiting a long time for the ability to do arbitrary SQL queries against even your own books. You'd be better off exporting them and doing that sort of thing locally.

Oh well, I just hope the database aspect gets some more attention, one day.

It's getting plenty of attention -- they're just choosing which parts to give the arbitrary public access to, so that a bunch of naive queries don't bring down the servers. This is not unreasonable and isn't an indication that they somehow aren't paying attention; it just means you don't get your particular pony.

For me, what's the most useful about Collections is the possibility of two-tiered organizing. In particular, I can view and work with tags only for one collection, or for all of them. It's also the possibility to leverage separate recommendations and connections (decide which parts of my library to include rather than exclude), which I hope LT will develop even further.

For me the most important thing originally was a way to be able to separate out my Comic books from the other books. My tags page is much easier to look at when they are filtered like that. I have over 25,000 tags and over 2,200 distinct tags, Collections gives me another great tool to organize my library. Sooner or later I will even add my wife's books in now that I can exclude them from recommendations. I do also really like the Read but Unowned and Wishlist features as well, My wishlist is currently around 350 titles, and I could probably increase that by a couple hundred more if I had the time.

19: Ironically, that's one of the things I *don't* like about Collections. I hate the fact that if I'm in one Collection, it only shows me tags for that collection. It makes my easily-confused mind think I have less tags then I really do, wonder if tags are missing, etc etc.

The real power of collections? Cuteness.

I agree wholeheartedly with 19 and 20. Also, it makes doing sub-searches easier, being able to search on tags in a specific collection. (Which wouldn't be as big a deal if multi-parameter searching worked 100% in the first place, but I digress...)

I agree wholeheartedly with 22.

Robert

And I agree wholeheartedly with 24ERROR CIRCULAR REFERENCE ERROR

I agree wholeheartedly with 26.

I agree with 26 as well, but 28 is a crock!

ETA: You may have gotten here from here!

Justjim,
You're the smartest, nicest person ever!

Told you it would be a crock! Actually after I posted #27, I thought I might have stopped the thread dead in the water. Well done for thinking of such a witty way to keep it going!

I think #29 stopped the thread dead in the water.

I agree. #29 stopped the thread dead. There will be no more posts after it.

Absolutely.

I don't remember ever seeing a thread less likely to attract further posts.

Indeed

(though maybe it's just pining for the fjords)

Wait! I think I can hear it breathing!

If you think I'm doing mouth-to-mouth on this thing, you're nuts!

Nah, just playing with a spindle.

Okay, we've got the thread on the table...let's just hook up the neck electrodes and wait for another lightning strike...

It worked! SHE'S ALIVE!!!

*waits anxiously for consciousness*

Rawr! Brains! BRAAAAAAAAAAAINS!!!

We belong dead. Wait, what's this "we"?

I keep coming back to this thread whenever I need a good giggle. Just in case y'all thought you were simply amusing yourselves in here ...

Today Iowa, tomorrow THE WORLD!

Seems a bit of a rush, Mary. How about today Iowa, tomorrow Nebraska and maybe a bit of Kansas. Then a three-day weekend, then maybe a fresh start on Illinois?

Then, two weeks from next Tuesday, maybe three weeks if we get caught up, THE WORLD!

If that's alright with All You Zombies.

*mops up Diet Pepsi spew*

I just come up with the concepts. I leave the management details to greater minds.

You know, I go through many keyboards that way, Mary.

Me too. You're a dangerous man.

>44 justjim: That's not a very efficient route to world domination. First west, then south, then east. But if you insist, at least do us Hawkeyes a favor and take out Missouri on your way from Kansas to Illinois.

It's not so much a March to Power as a Shuffle to er, well see Msg 40

Actually I thought of Abby Someone somewhere near Msg 38-40. And the next message will appear in Area 51. Surely that will stop this thread.

They got me!!



ETA: Visiting from TheoClarke's door? Use this to return.

Scalpel!

Daddy?!

Judging from your profile photo, no.

You may want to give Pennsylvania back after you get here. Our weather is terrible.

Clearly The Thread of the Undead cannot be stopped.

This is the thread that never ends,
Yes it goes on and on, my friends,
Some people started writing it, not knowing what it was,
and they'll continue writing it forever just because...

This is the thread that never ends,
Yes it goes on and on, my friends,
Some people started writing it, not knowing what it was,
and they'll continue writing it forever just because...

...

So we're stuck in some sort of loop are we?

I wonder how that happened.

Perfect, justjim.

*snort*

*hears the Twilight Zone theme music*

Wait! What is behind this door?

Good one TC. I'm vaguely envisioning a game similar to this one but using Talk links to make a conversation. Shall we start a group somewhere and start a rules thread to nut out the, erm, well, rules?

eta/ps I added a return link from the door. Something only I could do. Need to think that through for the new game.

***Cough*** ahmen

I think the real power of collections, is as a demonstration of the commitment the LT staff has to is users.

Otherwise ditto 22>

wow! You've got quite some messages collected. I wondered about 65 unread messages ;-)

>66 Buchmerkur: Spam messages are now hidden after being flagged. It totally confused me the first time I opened some ancient thread with seemingly no new messages since 2000s :D