Naming conventions for genres and topics

Keep your genres, topics, and tags clean as your catalogue grows.

Pick a system upfront

Before you have 1,000 books, decide:

• Will you use Dewey decimal? Library of Congress? Your own scheme?
• How granular: 10 genres? 30? 100?
• One sub-genre level or more?

Genres

• 10-15 top-level genres is the sweet spot
• Each should have at least 20 books once your library is full
• Renaming is easy; merging takes effort

Sub-genres

Use sparingly. A sub-genre with 1-2 books is not useful.

Topics

• Cross-cutting themes (Marriage, Travel, World War II)
• Patron-facing — clickable
• Can grow as you go; no need to pre-decide

Tags

• Short labels for filtering
• Librarian-facing, not displayed prominently
• Use for: workflow (needs-rebinding), audience (for-teens), themed (summer-reading)

Renaming

• Catalog → Settings → Genres / Topics / Tags
• Rename any
• All books using it update automatically

Merging

• Have "Sci-fi" and "Science Fiction" as separate genres? Merge them.
• Catalog → Genres → find one → Merge into → pick the other → confirm

Audit periodically

Every 6 months, look for:

• Genres with only 1-2 books (delete or merge)
• Topics no one clicks (delete)
• Tags only used once (delete)