There's a little click on thingy on my bookshelf books & on my wish list books. I just noticed it today. What is it for?????

I was wondering the same thing....................

 I just noticed it today, too. Maybe something is forthcoming in the WL changes.  They are on my Reminder list books, too.

From The Help Center:

Robert posted this in CMT ~~

Tags will start appearing next to a lot of places books show up on the site. The tags are public.

They work just like tags on any other website, such as Amazon, LibraryThing, LiveJournal, etc.

For example, all of my cookbooks are cataloged at LibraryThing, and they are all tagged as "cookbooks" and "nonfiction" and then tagged more specifically as "baking," "Chinese cooking," etc. When I click on, say, the Chinese cooking tag, all of my Chinese cookbooks show up. That's just one way to use tags.

For more about tags, go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tag_%28metadata%29

And see "folksonomy" here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folksonomy

Ummm, still trying to figure out practical uses for the new tags here......

Thanks for the info Jessica, but why would we need them to be public? I don't get it.

Re: public tags

See the folksonomy entry here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folksonomy

"Folksonomy (also known as collaborative tagging , social classification, social indexing, social tagging, and other names) is the practice and method of collaboratively creating and managing tags to annotate and categorize content. In contrast to traditional subject indexing, metadata is not only generated by experts but also by creators and consumers of the content. Usually, freely chosen keywords are used instead of a controlled vocabulary."

It's a collaborative way of categorizing content, and here it will create another way to find books about things in which you're interested, among other things. I think it's a great idea for PBS.

Edited to add: I'm currently reading Maharanis: The Lives and Times of Three Generations of Indian Princesses by Lucy Moore. I could give it tags such as "India," "royalty," "Indian royalty," "British Raj," "biographies," "biographies of women" etc. Then anyone who is interested in, say, the British Raj could find that book by that tag. Tagging is far more flexible than plain old subject cataloging.

Jessica-

Do you like/use LibraryThing? I just took a look at it - hadn't heard of it before.

thanks

Kathy, I adore LibraryThing! I have just finished cataloging my TBR and keepers (1466 books; basically everything but the books I have listed on PBS). Never again will I order/buy a book that I already own! I've really been having a lot of fun with it.

I can see lots of uses for tags here -- particularly in genre fiction, which can be hard to find (i.e. we have no classification for "historical fiction").

I TAGged a bunch of my husband's Scottish romance novels, along with other  books on my bookshelf.  They should be visible, and you're welcome to go look if it would help someone understand how a system like this might work for PBS.  There are, of course, plenty of other ways, but being a librarian, I tend to think of subject cataloging first.

Cheers,

Catt

Sounds interesting, but I was really hoping that we could have private tags for our wishlists. There are many books on it that I'm looking to get for friends and family and having the ability to add tags to them would really help me remeber which book is for who. I wonder if they couldn't make the tags come with a "public" or "private" option?

Tag can remain "private" if you word it in a way no one else will, like "Buy for Aunt Mary J. for Xmas 2007"   No one else is going to use this tag except you, so this tag will most likely NOT show up in a tag search. 

On the other hand, the most commonly used tags will show up publiclly.  Say many people use the tag "Funny".   Then this tag will show up publicly in a search for all "Funny" tagged books, due to the sheer volume of this particular tag.

Tag searches are still pending, I think.  Still lots to try out and learn on tags.  Some potential seen already for cataloging and more specific searches. 

Ummm, still trying to figure out practical uses for the new tags here......

Someone may have already said, but I can think of a few.  Book # in series.  a name (like my friend or my mother, etc) to remind me WHY that book is even on my WL.  A reason I might need a 2nd copy.....I messed myself up once because I thought "Oh, I already got this" only later remembering I wanted a 2nd copy for the kids schoolwork.  Yep, I could make them work, LOL.

I noticed that there are several books tagged as "not yet published."  Will the individual that tagged them that way have to remove it themselves after they are published or will there be a way for others to remove outdated tags?

I wonder too if we can edit tags....ETA  I found the Help Center info has been updated in the last day or two. Yes, you can remove your own tag.

I guess this is going to be a feature where the benefits will become apparent as time goes on.  I don't think I have much use for it myself since I only wish for books for myself and don't need to categorize them.  I think I would like to search books for other people's comments but am still not sure how it works.  For example, if someone tags something "a great book" and you search for great, will it come up?  Or do you have to search for "a great book"?  If you tag something privately "need for school" and other people use the same tag, when you search for "need for school" will you get hundreds of books that other people need for school? 

Sounds like there is great potential but we will have to figure out the details.

I'm totally loving the "tag" thingy! So far I've created my own shopping list for my friend Cyndy "From Cyndy's List" and those fiction books which are "Asian American situations and characters" and "Hawaiian"... I've created a "1st in series" and "2nd of trilogy".... and when I click on the particular tag, only those books which have that tag are listed.

I hope this give people ideas on what kind of tags they can create!

I've started using the Tags to put the release dates on the books on my Wishlist.  Half my wishlist are for books that aren't even released yet and it really helps to see the release date tag now!

Okay, I'm not sure this exactly related, but I didn't want to start a new thread.  I found this amusing.  How tags work...

If you look up Kite Runner through a basic search, there are 47 results.  Of those, 2 have tags so far.  One of those 2 says...

I think most possible thoughts about the book were covered here.

I wish they were private. I keep seeing other peoples tags. I was looking at something recently.  One of them said "you've already read this one" when I know I haven't read that book and I haven't created any tags.

I saw two tags that piqued my curiosity.  0709 edit  (used 102 times) and 0709 pic (used 45 times).  What could they mean?

I bet those tags are being used by a member who is submitting book edits and cover images--0709 might be July 9th, being the date she submitted edits?  not sure why she would tag them like that in retrospect though.

It reminds me of Google's image matching game.I never matched with anyone on that either.They would show a picture of say, a train, and I would think of all the words you could use for train.Most of the other tags would just say tran.......(yes misspelled).Needless to say, I don't play anymore. :(