Types vs. Tagging

Is there a difference in the way that different types tag their books? I have a theory that iNtuitives (of which I am one) are more likely to tag their books in an orderly, perhaps hierarchically, fashion more like traditional subject classifications, while Sensors are the ones who will tag books based on specific things in them like Dragons or Set In Greece. Maybe P and J might have something to say about how organized or haphazard your tagging is, or whether you've actually finished that re-tagging effort.

Any thoughts?

ETA: I wonder what type Tim is?

My tagging is very methodical (ISTJ). I tagged everything with fiction or non-fiction first, then went through fiction and tagged everything fantasy, scifi, mystery, etc. Same with non-fiction (history, biography, etc). then I started adding in things like what series it was a part of, locations, that sort of thing.

I have no idea what my dad's personality type is, but his tagging is so haphazard that when he asked me to work on his catalog a little while he was out of the country, I gave up after a few pages and seriously considered deleting his entire catalog and "fixing" it for him.

I just make up whatever tags I want, e.g., instead of "erotica" I use "dirty stories." More amusing to me. However, I do order my TBRs: TBR1, TBR2, TBR3. Plain TBR means I'll get to it one day, maybe never.

Edited to add:
And, jj, are you trying to call Tim out? If I had to guess, I'd say INTP.

I think the thing that most affects my tagging is that I am a P. So, I will put in lots of tags on a book, sometimes as many as 10. I don't try to liit tags (I did in the very beginning: for non-fiction books, I tried not to repeat any word in the title as a tag. I found that was foolish, because I couldn't find all my books that were related without repeating title words). Putting in synonyms is useful where there isn't a single word that conjures up the subject. (e.g. railroads vs. railways). As an ENTP, I'm not methodical, but I will review tags to make sure that every travel book has a "travel" tag. For fiction, if the book is "genre", science fiction, mystery, fantasy, I don't put in either a "fiction" tag or a "novel" tag. I do try to have some of the tags on a book to be similar to what other people are using, this allows for a better comparison, and makes the tagmash more effective.

I'm an ISTP. My tagging is somewhat haphazard, and based on what I think are my own needs in looking for a book, not a generalized system as in library subject headings. I do a bit of that at work.
I don't tag for fiction-non-fiction or lit, or that kind of general subject. My tagging system is developing; I enterd my books without any tags. I do have tags for mysteries and British mysteries. These are useful for me. I have fantasy and sf tags, and I have my own notions of what belongs in each. I'm beginning to note special settings for novels, some themes in novels and some notes about time periods.

I have some general tags of history, science, nature. I also have tags for music, musicians, politics, - all fairly general. I do have a lot of single tags; only used once.

If I get the time and the mood to do more tagging I might develop more detailed systems, but right now when I tag I use what comes to mind as I edit, and I make more detailed tags for books I have read recently.

I just do title, author, main character(s), series (if applicable), and genre and/or major themes. Simple.

# 6

How do you tag authors?
last name only
last name followed by first name
first name followed by last name (I do this)

I only make author tags on a few authors like:
C S Lewis
Charles Williams
Michelin (Travel Publications)

INTJ here. I'm pretty methodical about my tags, and am fairly liberal in the number of tags I'll add to an item. On the other hand, a little creativity and mischief is also a good thing!

(citygirl, I would have voted INTP for Tim, too. But it's really just a guess.)

I have a sort of hierarchy, I guess, but it's really pretty random. I tag everything fiction/nonfiction (or both), but that's because it makes searching easier rather than because I want the tags there. I have dragons, but not, say, cats. I tag settings, genres, subjects, series, topics or themes that I (haphazardly) feel like noting. I'll tag things even if I have no other books that a tag might match, in case I ever get more. If I think there might be a lot of books with something in common, I'll add a tag for it, not that I'm very consistent about going through to catch all the old ones... maybe one day. I'll never finish my tagging effort... more things come to mind all the time.

I like making connections between unrelated books. I'm more likely to add a tag to a fiction book if I have nonfiction books that use the tag. I used to have a prefix for the setting, but then I decided I'd rather group them with any nonfiction about the same area.

I also like to look at my tag cloud, which strikes me as weird. But I do it anyway :)

And I'm glad 'see yours' is back on the author pages, because I was afraid I was going to have to go through and tag with the author name just so I could see them easily.

What are your favourite tags - meaning the ones you use that you have the most affection for?

Mine are "pooh studies" (alternate: "winniana"), "small boys" and "tigers". Most of the latter two are Calvin and Hobbes books, but A Child's Christmas in Wales sneaked in there as well. (For the "small boys" tag, that is. There aren't any tigers in Dylan Thomas. Are there?)

antqueen - I'm imprssed at 9 tags per book, that is twice mine of 4.5 tags per book.

My most common tag is "travel" used on 329 books.

For authors, my wife and I have used "C S Lewis" 51 times, and "Kurtz" (for Katherine Kurtz) 27 times. She also has 27 Rumer Godden books so tagged (actually I tagged them thusly).

I tagged 267 books as "novel" and 175 as "fiction" and as I write this late at night I don't think I could give you the difference between the two.

Of my common tags that might be unique, I have used "alphabetic" 45 times. This means a dictionary or encylcopedic type book whose entries/chapters/descriptions are alphabetized rather than thematic.

I read somewhere that and identifiable characteristic of NT children is that they like to collect things like rock collections etc. then catagorize them. It seems to me that this is related to collecting books and catagorizing them.
I am an INFP, and i only like to buy the books that I have read and liked (that way i can reread them), although I end up with a lot more since the library does not have all the books I want to read. The books I own, I have catagorized not for my use, but as I assumed it would be useful for other people when searching for books. The catagories are random.

chamekke, I'm fond of my 'snarky footnotes' tag, and I'm fighting an urge to go find more books that meet the criteria just so I can use it again :) One of my favorite tags that I don't use is (I'll filter, just to be polite) 'more f-ing cat fantasy'. It cracks me up.

I may have to add 'tigers' just for its value in linking unrelated books. I mean, there's Calvin & Hobbes, Life of Pi, Jungle Books, and those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head.

vpfluke, some of my 9+ tags per book are just admin junk. With tags for whether I have the right cover, for fiction/nonfiction, and at the moment for binding... right there that's 3 each. Well, not counting the audiobooks, which usually just have 2 or 3 total. Anyway.

mpramanik, I like to collect things, but I don't categorize them unless there's something like LT to make it absurdly easy. I had rock collections but they were just, well, rock collections, carefully stored (in absolutely no order) in old butter cups.

I have to ask, since LT is down and I'm anxiously waiting for it to reappear so I can submit without this disappearing: What, exactly, does one do with a collection of rock collections? How wonderfully meta ;) (sorry, sorry, I've only had one cup of coffee today...)

Yeah, what's the thing with rock collections? (I have piles of them and my son has the same affliction although, neither of us is much into cataloguing them or even organizing them). It would be interesting to hear why others find this a necessary part of existence. I'm at a loss to defend it.

when i was in prison down south, i had a small collection of HUGE rocks and, over time, this became a HUGE collection of small rocks.

My biggest "collection" problem is with public timetables (bus, rail, etc). I must 40,000. I've given at least 10,000 to the Motor Bus Society's archives. (I did a 'motor bus' touchstone just to see what would come up)

I've given up on the whole rock collection thing. I think I have a notebook collection though... blank "special" notebooks that I don't dare write in...

ISTJ. As library classification systems (Dewey, UDC) is one of my interests, I use the Swedish public library subject classification scheme "SAB" as the basis for one set of tags. In addition to that, I also use English keywords to indicate the general subject (or subjects) of each title.

That makes two different classes of tags in my library. In both cases, I try to follow what I believe are common conventions, to make my tags useful to other LT users. I don't want to invent an entirely new scheme that nobody else has ever seen. The SAB scheme originated elsewhere, but I have seen two or three other Swedish LT users tag their books using SAB codes. For the plain language subject tags, I use English only as that is the most common language on LT, even as Swedish is my native tongue and most of my books are in Swedish. To keep the two tagging schemes apart, the SAB tags are themselves tagged with a "SAB" label. My tag cloud still looks weird, but at least not as messy as it would without that label.

While you may think an ISTJ would assign a unique tag to each title to represent its contents in every detail, I actually prefer broad terms that cover a good number of books, because I feel I add more useful information to LT in that way. I have even added subject tags to fictional literature, to provide hints of what the plots are about.