It seems like the only place we can see other members' tags for books is if you search for books in the database, correct?  When I look at my wishlist, or another member's bookshelf, I don't see any tags except my own.  I keep coming up with tag questions, I wish there was more detailed information in the help center.  I would like to tag books in such a way that it will be helpful later for members to search, but I don't want to waste my time if I don't know what I'm doing!  The "helpful tags" thread on here a while ago was a good start.

Diane... I've tagged some of my one-of-a-kind books so that they'll be advertised.  For example, I had a book titled "Cat Mysteries" so I tagged it "cat" and also "mystery" which are common tags.  I received a request for the book within 2 days of tagging it.  I think the trick is to use the common tags.  When you begin to tag a book, and if the tag is a common one, a drop-down list will appear which will also show how many times the tag has been used.

I would love to do this but it just seems like there should be guidelines of some kind.  I read an article about tagging, I think it was at LibraryThing, which specifically says the idea of tagging is NOT to have rules, that if many people participate it will naturally work itself out to be most useful to the most number of people--but my analytical mind says I want rules! LOL !  For example, your cat mystery book--to be complete would you have to tag it all of these: mystery, mysteries, cat, cats, cat mystery, cat mysteries?  If someone searches by "cat" will if find books tagged "cats'?  What about searching for "cats"--will that miss the ones tagged "cat"? 

I know that if you find a book already tagged you can click on the tag to find other books tagged the same way.  I'm assuming that when the full search function is available you will be able to just type in a word in a field and search that way--that's the part that has me questioning exactly how the search will work.  It would also be helpful if the books on members' bookshelves showed the tags.

Example: If you type the word "cat" in the search engine, It should show matches such as "cat" "cats" and possibly,  "catch" "catsup" (lol), etc.

If it is like the other searches on this site it will have to be exact.

ie: "cat" will only bring up "cat"...and "cats" will only bring up "cats"

But Librarything allows people to combine the tags, so one search will bring up all the variations. People can also combine variations on author names, and different editions of the same book so they're all connected.

You can see the tag combining log here.

*off to go tag a bunch of books with 'catsup'*

*I'm just going to use the "cat" tag so I can see if I can see the catsup tags as well!*