Bible Background Collection @ Mark Barnes in particular

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Mark Barnes | Forum Activity | Replied: Thu, Nov 10 2011 9:23 AM

Frank Fenby:

Take you pick. You can either write convoluted dynamic collection formulae (that may not always catch every thing) or you simply go through you library and put each resource where you want it. I vote for the tagging method. Then use dynamic collections to build supersets of the tagged collections.

I don't think we need to choose only one of these methods. There are two great advantages of dynamic collections. (1) It will capture some books that otherwise you would miss. (2) It will automatically add new books into the collection.

Tags, on the other hand, are both simpler and more precise.

My own practice, therefore is:

1. Where collections are going to be subjective, I build collections only using tags. For example, I have a collection called 'Intermediate Commentaries'. The collection rule is simply type:commentary mytag:intermediate
2. Where collections are easy to define, I build collections only using a rule. For example, I have a collection called 'English Bibles'. The collection rule is simply type:bible lang:english
3. Where collections are more complex, I build collections using a combination of tags and a rule. In particular, I think it definately worthwhile to identify which subjects are common to the resources you want in your collection and use that in a rule to bring in more resources that you wouldn't necessarily have thought of. In this case collection rules tend to look something like mytag:exampletag OR subject:(example1, example2, example3). For some collections you can also add OR title(example1, example2) as well. For all their apparent complexity all the collections I posted above basically follow that pattern.
   

My own feeling is that gives the best of both worlds. However, this is definately an area where we need to develop strategies that work for us. Because I frequently add to my library, and because my library is large, and because I like algebra and logic, then dynamic rules (with a bit of help from tags) certainly works best for me.

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Frank Fenby | Forum Activity | Replied: Thu, Nov 10 2011 11:15 AM

Mark Barnes:

I don't think we need to choose only one of these methods.

Agreed. I just like using tags at the root level because it insures that I have examined each resource, or set of resources like a multivolume commentary.