Tagging your New England-related books

Do you tag your books related to New England any particular way?

I haven't been terribly consistent with my tagging. I started tagging fiction and nonfiction with "New England" and used another tag for "New England History" (which includes straighforward history and social history) and I think I have a tag for "Maine Authors".

When I first added my library I wasn't doing much topical tagging at all--a typical novel in my catalogue would have something like "fiction, 20th c., american lit, mystery, read 2007". But a while back I decided I wanted to start including some tags for themes and locations, so I am using a "new england" tag now but I haven't gone through the whole library yet to include it everywhere it should be. I've just finished packing up all my books and I'm hoping when I unpack them I'll be able to spend some time cleaning up the catalogue as I shelve.

If I was tagging history, I would have separate tags "new england, history" since that's how I structure my tagging in general, also.

I've been starting to tag my books with a broad sense of the location where they are - ie England, America....but I've also been thinking of breaking that down to include tags for when more obvious city/town names are mentioned, like Boston or London.

I gave up trying to take UK and US books a while back. I consider them my 'status quo' but I like to see how I'm doing with other countries. I have a good-sized collection of New England-related books, so I thought I'd tag it. One never knows.

I frequently use state specific tags, and usually don't have New england and a state name in the tag. But, I do like some redundancy in tags. Here are my tags (probably not complete). I put in state abbreviations to allay confusion, but not good for social networking.

Boston -25
New England - 22
Massachusetts - 15
Maine -10
Rhode Island - 8
New Hampshire - 6
Vermont - 5
Newport - 4
Connecticut - 2
Cape Cod - 2
Providence - 2
Cambridge MA - 1
Cape Elizabeth -1
Concord MA - 1
Marion MA - 1
Martha's Vineyard - 1
Narragansett Indians - 1
New Bedford - 1
New Haven - 1
Worcster - 1

Wow, you really get specific.

When I first started tagging, I would not put in a tag if the word was in the title or subtitle of the book. I then realize there was a whole load of books that I couldn't find if I was just looking by tags, or seeing what other books were tagged the same way. So, I extended my tags. Then I combined some tags, like railways and railroads, see virtually no difference between the two and working in the transportation industry I had the impression that I was familiar with this turf. However, these tags got uncombined, and so I came up with the modest practice of redundant tagging. So, all British railroad topics get tagged as railroads and as railways. American railroads usually don't get the railways tag, unless the featured railroad has the word railway in its title (e.g. Southern Railway System). {New England railroads do not usually use the term railway, the most important exception that I could find is the Claremont and Concord Railway Co which was a freight rr operating between Claremont, Newport, Sunapee and Bradford, NH. It had started out as an electric railway, and is now partially still in existence as the Claremont Concord Railroad, part of it is a rail-trail}

So, this is a long way of saying that some books in my library may share some of the above tags. So a book about Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine will be tagged with all three state tags, perhaps also New England.

Some more New England tags:

MBTA - 5
Boston Elevated Railway - 1
Connecticut Co - 1 (trolleys & buses in Hartford, New Haven, & Stamford, but not in Bridgeport, Norwalk, or Waterbury which was Connecticut Railway & Lighting Co, and I don't have a book on this subject, but wished I did).
Connecticut River Valley - 1
Lincoln MA - 1
Plymouth - 1
Salem - 1

Plus one more for Connecticut.

There are books out there on the MBTA?

I keep trying to reduce my tags, an inclination which might come from my years at the bookstore. And I have changed my tagging over the course of my 17 or so months on LT, so that's more likely the reason for my inconsistency.

#9

The Boston Street Railway Association is a very active group, and has numerous publications, as well as a bi-monthly periodical, "Rollsign". I only have a minority of their stuff. They've even written histories of trackless trolleys in Fitchburg/Leominster and Providence, RI. Their website: http://www.transithistory.org/bsra/