Show Selected Tag Mirror tags in the library

When I do a Tag Mirror for my library, I am able now to select a collection, or a year to produce a display of the Tag Mirror for the selected collection/year.

If I, then choose one of the tag names I obtain a list of all books which qualify for that name within the selected collection/year.

I would REALLY appreciate if there was an option to SHOW those books in the library book display rather than a column of books as currently results.
Showing like this is what is currently possible for the GENRE display screen.

Interestingly, in the tag mirror display at upper left corner there is a field which lists the total number of books within the display. If I click on that field the books are then all shown in the library book display.

If the books for the selected tag name only were sent to the full book display, I could then create a tag name to be added to those selected books. This would be enormously useful to someone who wants to create special tags for many/all books in their library.

Showing like this is what is currently possible for the GENRE display screen. If my books are described by, say 20 different genres it is very easy to add those genre names as tags in the correct books.

In essence I am asking for the same capability for use in the tag mirror display

Unfortunately, I don't see this happening, because we really want members to tag their own books. You can still technically do this, just not as quick as a simple Power Edit from a Tag Mirror filter to copy others' tags.

>2 kristilabrie: I was expecting this, but still disappointed. I don't see that these tag mirror tags would stop anyone else from placing the myriad of tags already being placed.

I am curious as to ways currently to bulk tag a set of books in a library. The only way I am aware of is to create a universal import file that contains the book details, including the ISBN. Is there any other way?

>3 JoeB1934: You can bulk tag using Power Edit in your catalog. Just click the lightning bolt and then select the books you want to tag (or remove a tag from), type the tag in the box, and click "change selected books"

>4 norabelle414: I am aware of that technique, but it works well for a few books that you have on a list. If there are 150 books in a 1500 book library it doesn't work for me.

I have a different approach to propose within the current tag mirror function. Currently clicking on a tag obtains a list of all books associated with the tag. This list has details about the book, such as title , author, prevalence, etc.

If there was an option which displayed title, author, ISBN it could produce the details necessary to use the universal import approach.
Is that a possibility?

>5 JoeB1934: Which ISBN for the book?

From your books:

Horse
Members 194
Popularity 117,662th most-popular work
ISBNs 4 associated ISBNs

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
Members 232
Popularity 97,026th most-popular work
ISBNs 4 associated ISBNs

Night of the Living Rez
Members 50
Popularity 438,402th most-popular work
ISBNs 2 associated ISBNs

The Latecomer
Members 141
Popularity 163,611th most-popular work
ISBNs 4 associated ISBNs

The Honeybee Emeralds
Members 22
Popularity 877,951th most-popular work
ISBNs 3 associated ISBNs

The Signature of All Things
Members 3,006
Popularity 3,720th most-popular work
ISBNs 43 associated ISBNs

>5 JoeB1934: You can use the search function in combination with the power edit to narrow down the books shown, or even just click on a tag in your catalog to see only the books with that tag, and then power edit from there.

>7 norabelle414: I understand that, but I am looking for a convenient way to create a tag for all my books which come up in a tag mirror display.

I understand the interest in having users create their own tags. For my case I have used the LT Genre screen to create genre tags for all of my books. Feeling that it is necessary to distinguish those tags from original tags I prepended a G_ in front of the tag. For example, for genre Mystery their books are all tagged as G_Mystery. I would prepend M_ for any tags created by use of the Tag Mirror.

I am not aware of any way to differentiate any tag list into categories. As I study other members tags, I usually come away with the feeling that they are a mix of non-genre and genre tags.

Regardless of your final response to my request it might be useful to have a way to organize any group of tags into at least 2 categories, and to have a way to sort by category.

You can use tags any way you want; most people don't want to make theirs the way you describe. I certainly don't.

Some people make compound tags, like Fiction - Mystery
and
Fiction - Fantasy or the like.

Or use a combo of Collections and Tags, e.g. a collection called Mystery and then tags for Golden Age, Noir, Historical, etc.

>3 JoeB1934: If you do a universal import including ISBNs, the books will be imported from your selected sources based on the ISBN, which can change many of your details.

>10 reconditereader: I completely agree with what you are saying about how each member can have their own system. I am not asking for anything that impacts on any concept.

I simply want a group of books which came from a tag mirror source to be shown in my library. How I use power edit, or any other device is up to me.

My example of how I use the 'show in the library' when the source is the Genre screen is just what I do with the information. I could as well have created a connection, or anything else I came up with.

The only real objection from LT support to doing this is that:

"Unfortunately, I don't see this happening, because we really want members to tag their own books. You can still technically do this, just not as quick as a simple Power Edit from a Tag Mirror filter to copy others' tags.

How is this reason good enough? We really want you to work harder?

If the answer had been, great idea, but we have higher priorities, or the re-programming is too difficult I would have been disappointed but used Excel to get what I wanted and have been doing so for the last year.

Based on my experience where I learned so much about my library, I made this request so members who don't have the time, or the Excel knowledge could also learn more about their library.

The point is that crowd sourced information requires input from lots of individuals. If people can easily just copy the existing tags, that aspect is lost. This is not a new priority, but part of the basic reason tags have been set up the way they are from the beginning. It's part of the founding philosophy of the site.

>13 MarthaJeanne: Thank you for that answer to my question. I will now proceed with the product as it exists by using Excel to achieve my purposes.

Within the founding philosophy what was the intention as to how a member would actually use the Tag Mirror?

Tags are indeed used in many ways by the members of LT. It is an additional way to search for something in one's collection beyond the fields such as person, title, publication, comments, private comments, etc. Sometimes the information in the tags repeats content found in those places but it may be completely separate.

For example, when people were looking for a way to indicate the physical location of their books, some started to use tags starting with the "at" symbol such as @garage-box-23 or @case-A-shelf-2. Clearly tags like this would have no meaning to anyone else.

When you use the mobile apps for LT, you will see tags that others have used for a particular work at least in one part of the interface called "Member Tags". Here is a sample from a recent addition to my collection:



Looking at these tags (none of which are my own), I can't see that very many of them would be things I'd want to import to my catalog. These are the tags I use:

Disney film, DJ, 1st

and it is a member of the collection Disney Book to Film since these are relevant for me. Thus, if I wanted to find books from that collection that were first printings, I could filter by the collection and search for the tag 1st.

One of the things that is necessary when working with any web application or piece of software is to figure out how to use its existing features to work with your data. You can readily imagine expecting a large software company like Microsoft, Adobe, or Apple to change their product to conform to your usage or ideal. You can (and I do) want changes. But getting them is another matter. LT is open to suggestions and perhaps 10% of them are embraced and eventually implemented. This is miles beyond what other companies do. For example, after 20 years of computer companies making multi-core processors, Adobe Acrobat Pro is still a single-threaded application and uses just one processor core for activities like OCR no matter how many you have.

At the time that Tag Mirror was introduced, there was an Internet trend for "tag clouds" and this seems to be their version of that. It is some new way to look at existing data that might be helpful for some.

James

>15 Keeline: One important item I learned here is that I rarely use the mobile LT app. I must have it set up incorrectly as I do not see how to obtain what you have displayed here. I will look into that.

The second thing I learned is that my interest in tags comes from a totally different direction. First some background, I have been reading for at least 60 years now with the only objective being to read books that somehow got my interest. I started with mostly an interest in Scottish mystery writers but grew from there until 2020 when I woke up to realize that I had read almost 1000 books by over 400 authors without any specific goals.

It was then, also that I learned about LT and I decided to build my library in order to analyze what I had been reading, and what was I doing with all those authors?

So, I began a research project which I called my Reading Journey to learn more about myself. One key to this effort was to build an understanding about the types of books I had been reading. LT showed, not surprisingly that about 80 % of my books were consider Mysteries by classical genre definitions.

This wouldn't get me anywhere, so I decided to review heritage factors in my background, like having a Scottish mother and to employ the Tagmash feature of LT to determine about 20 tagmash phrases which modelled 85% of my reading by using moderately complex Excel models.

This year I decided to update that study and found that my reading interests have evolved in 2022 and the 2021 model was only about 65% consistent.

I had considered Tag Mirrors earlier, so I decided to use that feature to replace tagmash statements. With reasonable effort I was able to adapt and my new tag list models with 90% accuracy my 2022 books.

Why not stop there and move on with life? There are a number of other members who are intrigued with what I have learned about myself, and I was hoping that a moderate change to LT would allow Excel to be avoided.

To some degree I see that there is a bit of philosophical thing about what is 'proper' use of tag mirrors and I don't see the answer yet.

One thing I do realize is that I represent an extremely small fraction of members with this concept, so I am moving on.

>16 JoeB1934: "One important item I learned here is that I rarely use the mobile LT app. I must have it set up incorrectly as I do not see how to obtain what you have displayed here. I will look into that."

Are you using the iOS one or the Android one? This above looks like the iOS one and you get to it by simply clicking on a book in your catalog.

>17 AnnieMod: IOS and now I see what was meant. Thanks

I'm back again working on a way to use the Tag Mirror capability. I have accepted the fact that my original request is not going to be obtained, so I have been working on various ideas I have for accomplishing the same purpose within LT standard processes.

One idea that appears quite useful would be an option in the tag mirror display to toggle on the number of books for any given tag. If that could be done it would be of great assistance to me.

>9 JoeB1934: As I study other members tags, I usually come away with the feeling that they are a mix of non-genre and genre tags.

Tags are whatever. My tags include ones that categorize authors by my personal relationship to them, literary schools, subject matter tags, physical format tags (originally implemented before the current physical format data arrangement), and narrower genre labels than the ones in the genre field. Other users tag by physical location within their collections.

You are certainly welcome to do the sort of genre tagging you describe, but it seems superfluous to me, in light of the existing genre field. I would not bother to create such redundancies.

>20 paradoxosalpha: The difference between your view of the classical genres and mine is, shall we say amazing.

I see the classical genres as being rather limited from my point-of-view. My library always ends up with 65 % classified as 'Mystery'. But what kind of mystery? My tags list things like literary mystery, British mystery, historical mystery, etc. Then I go on to coming-of-age books, books-about-books, Native Americans, paleo biology, etc. Yes, I use Romance, History, Science Fiction and others that the classical genres do but I can build a tag genre list of 25, or so with so much more meaning to me.

I wonder what your 100 tags in Tag Mirror actually looks like.

Apparently, my tags are in extensive use by other members for their own unique purposes.

Wow, I just went to the tags you have placed on your books, and I am astounded at the prevalence of the so-called sub-genres you have. Do you consider those redundancies?

Genres are a quite new feature. So for many years they weren't redundant.

>21 JoeB1934:
I don't know what you mean by "classical genres." The LT genre field is intended for broad "bookstore" genres, which seems to be the sort of thing you mean. I find these categories to be conceptually sloppy, on the whole. I don't consider subject matter alone (e.g. my "heliolatry" or your "Native Americans"--or is that tag for authorship?) to determine genre, but I've probably read too much Northrop Frye.

>22 MarthaJeanne: Genres are a quite new feature. So for many years they weren't redundant.
True, but my remarks were made in the context of someone setting out on a tagging project now. As I noted, my own tags include ones that have become somewhat redundant with the creation of new data fields in LT.

Perhaps this is not meaningful but I didn't see it mentioned so I will do so for what value it might have.

When looking at a list or cover view of your catalog, there is a "Search your library" input field. Some clever things can be done with it. For example:

tag:bibliomysteries

Will let me search for items in my catalog (with the collection selected perhaps to filter large portions of the catalog) which have a tag called bibliomysteries.

The URL looks like this:

https://www.librarything.com/catalog/Keeline&deepsearch=tag%3Abibliomysterie...

The %3A is the colon character (:) in ASCII hexadecimal representation for URLs. Naturally Keeline represents my catalog / login name so that would have to be changed to your own, JoeB1934

I see in the preview that the URL has elipsis in the display. The last word is bibliomysteries. One character too many for this illustration.

James

>24 Keeline: That is a terrific suggestion and I will be using it soon.

Thanks