Note Tagging Strategies

Hello David. I'm not exactly sure what specifics about note tagging strategy you have in mind, but here is the big picture framework I use. I've "stress tested" it over the past 2 years and so far it's holding together.

Strategy:

1) Any note that goes into Logos must be easily retrievable using a variety of search methods. Nothing gets lost.

2) The tagging methodology must be consistent and simple to use; the effort to tag and stay organized supports scripture study, not creating an information management nightmare.

How I implement the strategies:

A) EVERY note receives one or more tags from a "tag dictionary". The dictionary is nothing more than a single note that contains every tag that I use across all notes. I developed the dictionary over the course of a couple of years by reading scripture and transferring notes from another study app, plus thinking hard about what tags would be both useful and necessary. I've found that I rarely add new tags to the dictionary. I do most of my work in the desktop app which, to be honest, makes tagging a little difficult to see because of the very small font and light grey shading that is used for tags. Last, I never "type" a tag; I always select one from the pop-up list at the bottom of note.

Occasionally I use the mobile app to do tag housekeeping for the desktop app. The mobile app lists the number of times a tag appears across your notes, and it allows me to see all ~50 tags whereas the desktop app stops at 30, I think. I scroll to the least frequently used tags and make decisions about whether to keep or delete them from the notes and, consequently, from the dictionary. This is also a good way to catch errors. I have several hundred notes that include the tag "faith", but one erroneous "fatih".

C) I use tags in conjunction with note anchors and notebooks. EVERY note (with the exception of "Administration" (see below) is anchored to at least one scripture reference, and many contain multiple anchors.

D) My tagging strategy also depends on a "keep it simple" notebook architecture. I use only 4 notebooks:

• Sermons. Notes from sermons that I listen to, either in person or online
• Administration. A very small number of notes such as the tag dictionary, my text highlighting scheme, and my note icon methodologies. This is basically just documentation so I remember what in the world I was thinking at the time.
• Scripture. These notes contain my personal verse, pericope, passage comments, passage lists, cross reference studies, etc.
• Books and Blogs. Notes from commentaries, dictionaries, web articles, email, etc. Anything that isn't a sermon, or isn't something that I wrote myself, goes into Books and Blogs.

E). I use separate, distinctive note icons for sermon notes, scripture notes (2 icons), and books/blogs notes. This allows me to quickly see what notebook the note belongs to as I read the text. Again, I don't want to wrestle with trying to remember the difference between 20 unique note icons as I read scripture. The screen capture below shows what I would normally expect to see on the average page in Logos. For Matthew 2:1 in the ESV it looks like I have 1 sermon note, 1 Bible Study Fellowship note, and 4 Books and Blogs notes. Each note would have at least 1 tag.

I hope this addresses what you were interested in. If anyone sees future constraints in my approach or danger zones where I'm heading toward a cliff please don't hesitate to point them out. Many thanks!

Mike

Hi MIchael. Here is a screen capture of my Tag Dictionary. As I look at it now, I see there are way more than the 50 tags I mentioned last night. Time for some spring cleaning.

Mike

You might also search the forums about applying mytags to Logos library resources. There are some really creative tagging methods out there which you can adapt to notes tags. Someone suggested "ToBeRead" for library resources that they plan to read at some point in the future. That prompted me to define the "ReadAgain" tag for a select set of my notes that either I didn't fully grasp the first time around, or that offer extraordinary insight on a topic.

Best wishes.

Mike