Library management

Tag every book you own. It takes time but is very important. Also create collections. 

I don't tag every book (I don't find it necessary), but I do create a lot of collections.  Most of my collections are dynamic collections based on the subject, author and title meta-data (many examples here: https://wiki.logos.com/Example_Collections).   My static collections tend to be smaller collections that are based on my preferences (like favorite Bibles).  Using collections makes searches much more targeted and is a good way to browse your library since the library can be filtered by collection now.

I tag the books that don't have subject meta-data for the categories I need.  For example, I tagged the books that I consider to be systematic theologies, because the subjects and titles assigned to these types of resources vary too widely for my tastes. I also tag books with the package name I bought them in, since order history doesn't tell me what I got in a package.

Many of my dynamic collection rules tend to based on lists of author names, like my reformed theology collection.  This was enhanced by the group effort to categorize all authors based on theology in this thread: Theology/Denomination Tags .  This resulted in many shared collections available in this Faithlife group: https://faithlife.com/logos-library-theology-denomination-tags/documents (you'll have to join the group to see them).  I have similar collections but I don't use the shared ones because I like my naming conventions better.

I use the star ratings to mark every book.  I give them all 2 stars by default.  That way, any book without stars I consider to be new (and not looked at yet).  I can find these non-starred books easily to process them ("rating:0"). Depending on the book, I add any necessary tags; I make sure that it is appearing in an appropriate collection (and if not, I determine what in the collection needs to be changed to include it); and I add a rating (2 stars if I don't have an opinion on the book).

I also generally sort my library by Last Updated.  This column may not appear by default so you have to right-click the column headers to turn it on.  I dragged it over to the left to be able to see it better.  This allows me to see recent library changes easily.

I don't want to sound too ignorant, but what is tagging? its benefit? and how do you tag?

Thank you

Richard John Shannon said:

what is tagging? its benefit? and how do you tag?

You Tag from your Library. It is a way of organizing your resources. It is helpful in keeping track of your resources and can be used in making Collections.

Once you've performed the above task it will result in the following:

Open the info pane (red arrow) and select the book you want to Tag; be sure you don't select on the title this will open the book. You may click anywhere else; this will result in the following:

Enter your Tag in the space labeled Add tag

Can any of you explain how the Collections groups in Faithlife work? I joined one group, but am unclear about what to do. I clicked on a document and got a copy. Is that all I need to do? What should I see in my library to know that I've done the right thing? lol 

Maybe the groups can include a tab that has instructions for those of us who are new?

Graham Criddle said:

You won't see anything in the Library panel but you should see something in your list of Collections.

Go to Tools -> Collections, click the "Open" button and you will see a list of Collections which should include the one you have copied.

Select that and you will see all the resources you have in your Library which match the Collection rules

Does this help?

Yes, that helps. Thank you very much! [:D] I see the collections I just created. I have some tags and some collections already, and now I'm getting confused about the benefit of doing both. What are the unique benefits of each?

Ok, I'm starting to slowly understand. I've got most books in Collections now thanks to the groups. But there's apparently no easy way to make sure every book is in a collection, so for that reason I can see the reason for tagging. And it looks like there's no way to tag all the books in a certain collection? It seems like the library could identify which books are in which collection; I could then sort by collection and more easily add the tags.

abondservant said:

The quick explanation is that by clicking library, and then clicking "all resources" you can open any collection. At that point you can tag within the collection, or the whole collection, or individual books. 

Awesome, thanks! That's exactly what I was looking for.[:)]

Bob Soule said:

To see which resources are not in a collection, you might want to take advantage of nested collections. 

• Create a new collection and call it "No Collections"
• Create a rule for this new collection of -  rating:>=0 to catch all resources. I also exclude manuscripts from this collection but you would not have to. You might want to also exclude bibles.
• Then from the open pull down of this new collection drag and drop a collection to the Minus side. See screen shot below.
• Repeat above step for all you collections as you can only drag and drop one at a time. (I far as I know)

Then you open your library to Collection - "No collection" and review to see if you want any of these resources in one of your collections as well as on ocassion you could search "No Collection".

This is a good strategy, but it's limited because you have to manually keep your "No Collection" collection up-to-date as you create more collections. Fortunately, at least Logos now automatically sorts the "Minus these resources" section alphabetically, so it's not that hard to click the Open menu and visually scan to see if you've missed any collections there and then drag them to add them to the list. But it would be nice if Logos provided an automated way to see a dynamic list of all your books that are not in any collections.

All of this is why resources should download into their own collections or by some other means download all together and not scattered throughout the library.