Tuesday Thingers ... Tags

Marie at The Boston Bibliophile hosts Tuesday Thingers. Today's question is about tags - do you tag? How do you tag? How do you feel about tagging- do you think it would be better to have standardized tags, like libraries have standardized subject headings, or do you like the individualized nature of tagging? What are your top 5 tags and what do they say about your collection or your reading habits?

My tags reflect my reading tastes and are largely general in nature with some breakdown. I tag by the main focus of a book such a General fiction, Non-fiction Mystery, Romance, Suspense, Memoir, et cetera. In some instances I will be break down my tags a bit more individually. My historical reading is tagged with Historical/[Country of origin] or Historical/[focus of the book such religious, royalty], Non-fiction/[book topic such as travelogue, sports, animals].

I like the individualized nature of tags in Librarything. Because of the ability to uniquely tag our libraries we can view other LTers libraries and get an overall sense of their reading tastes at a glance. By quickly scanning tags I can tell if that person's library is of interest to me or not. I believe standardized tags have their uses, especially in libraries and bookstores, where a wide variety of people are searching for a particular book or subject and have expectations that they will find "X" in a given place. Maybe LT could/(does?) offer standardized tags for users who want a simple and effect way to tag that would build consistency into their library while others could bypass such a feature and tag to match their particular tastes and needs. I have noticed there are some libraries in LT that are obsessively tagged right down to the tiniest detail.

The great thing about LT is the versatility and ability to build our libraries to meet our individual needs or expectations.

My top tags are: Suspense (162); Romance (133); DNF (117) - due to using LT as a reading journal; General fiction (100) and Romantic Suspense (92). If I exclude the DNF tag next in line is Legal Thriller (62). I expect some of those will be overtaken in the next year or so as my reading tastes are starting to gravitate more toward travelogues, non-fiction and historical fiction.