Maybe what is needed is a "Collection" tag for the Metadata - so those titles that are part of a collection, though not part of series, can be identified.
Metadata is an uneditable field in a resource. Collections are dynamic. So if you add a resource to a collection, the metadata can't and shouldn't be changed. Or are you referring to bundles of like books that are sold as a "collection"? It's confusing because the "collection" nomenclature means two different things.
I've begun tagging all my books with a special tag "Bundle: XXXX" which reminds me of what bundle/collection I bought them with. E.g. "Bundle: Calvin 500" and so on. I can sort/group by the My Tags field and see all the bundles/collections I own. I don't think they could sell the resources with these collections hardwired into the metadata, because many books come with more than one collection or base package.
You are correct - I guess I mean a metatag that represents the bundles that a title is included with - whether that bundle is a series or not.
Saying a metatag cannot be changed is not quite correct - I can edit the title of a work or add items to the "My Tag" entries. Perhaps these are not the correctly metatags, but they serve the same purpose.
You're right about that. They do have some fields that allow us to override the built in metadata for Title and Short Title only.
Bundles do change around, so it would be hard for them to be consistent about including a metatag for what bundle(s) the title is included with. When they update a resource file, should they update its metadata to the latest? Should that wipe out the info that goes with your version of the file? (You might have bought it last year when it was included with a bundle that has been restructured and doesn't include that title anymore, for example.)
Here's my method for tagging Bundles as I buy them, which really isn't that onerous (however it might be tricky for me to fill it in all the way back to when I first bought Logos).
I got this first idea from someone else on the forum: I use the ratings field to help me keep track of what new books have recently been downloaded. I reserve the two star rating for that. No stars means new books that I haven't tagged yet. Once I tag my new books, I assign them all two stars which says they've been processed but not rated yet. One star means a low rating but not so bad that I want to hide the book. Three stars is for a book I want to investigate further. Four and five stars are for books I've found to be particularly helpful or outstanding.
So my process goes like this:
Buy some new books
Download them. (No need to wait for indexing to complete to proceed to next step.)
Open the Library in Browse mode with the Info panel open
Select all the books that came together in a bundle (using Shift+click to select a range of books, or Ctrl+click to select discontiguous books)
In the info panel I now have the opportunity to tag all the books at once: click "add tag"
Type Bundle: Name of Bundle and press Enter.
That's all there is to it. I suppose it would be nice for Logos to do this for us, but as I mentioned above, it might be tricky. Do they add six tags here if the resource is included in six bundles? That wouldn't help me if I bought a collection which had this title in it and then later upgraded to a higher base package which also included the title; it won't tell me which bundle I personally got it with. Besides, I like the flexibility of being able to name all my bundles with the Bundle: prefix, so they group together when I sort by the My Tags field.
I only started doing this recently and have been gradually working my way backwards adding the Bundle tags to older packages I bought, by reviewing my Order History page on logos.com. But I'm keeping it up with new purchases so in the future it won't be much work at all.
