Non call number based library

I'm scoping out using TinyCat for our church library. It's about 1,000+ volumes that we shelve by category instead of call numbers. (e.g. Bibles, gender and sexuality issues, grief and loss, christian history, biography, etc.) We will continue to use this systems as our users prefer to browse and often have no specific book in mind, but know the subject they are interested in. Sort of like going into a bookstore to choose a book XHTML or whatever. So I need to attach a category (from a pre-determined list) to each book other than what might appear in the tags that is searchable and which tells the user where to find it.

Have others used this approach successfully in TinyCat and can they offer advice About how to proceed? I'm setting up a small sample library using a selection of my own books to try this out and would appreciate any advice anyone can offer before I go too far.

Any comments pro or con appreciated and valued.

>1 kcupery: If you're looking for feedback from other libraries/librarians using TinyCat, I'd recommend posting in the dedicated TinyCat group, rather than here in Welcome to LT.

Tags are great for categories on LibraryThing—that's sort of what they were designed for, and TinyCat will only ever show tags that you have entered. I'm not sure I follow what you mean by "what might appear in tags." Is there something that Tags doesn't do that you're looking for, specifically?

If it was LibraryThing I'd say use Collections for your categories if you don't want to use tags.

I would say that you have three choices for where to put this information.
1) It could be the first tag.
2) You don't say how many of these categories you have. If the list isn't more than about twenty items, you could use collections.
3) You could enter the category in 'Other Call Number'. A call number is simply an indication of where to find something on the shelf. This field is meant for whatever system you use for that whether exact or general, just not Dewey or LoC.

Thanks for the information. I'm new at this and probably didn't state it clearly.

I will try "collections" for our categories. This will direct people to the labeled shelves. We have 15 categories. I doubt that it would ever grow to 20, but will keep that in mind.

I'd like multiple tags shown to help overcome the obvious problem with forcing a book into our limited categories. The tags will allow some finesse in the nature of the text.

I'll play with it a bit and see how it goes.

I appreciate your indulgence.