Collections, Tags, and Organising Your Library

Your library at a glance

My Sourcemarks is where every record you create lives. Each time you sourcemark a file, it appears here — a growing library of your creative work and the choices you have made about how it should be used.

As that library grows, you need ways to find things quickly and keep related work together. Sourcemark gives you two primary tools for this: collections and tags.

Collections

Collections are folders. They group records that belong together for a specific reason.

You might create a collection called “Client Work 2024” for everything produced under a particular contract, or “Portfolio” for pieces you want to showcase. A collection called “Licensed Stock” could hold work you have made available for commercial use.

Collections work the way you would expect. Create one, give it a name, and add records to it. A record can belong to more than one collection, so you do not have to choose between “Client Work” and “Portfolio” — it can live in both.

Tags

Tags are labels. They cut across collections to describe what a record is, rather than where it belongs.

A photograph might be tagged “photography” and “commercial”. A design asset might be tagged “branding” and “vector”. Tags let you pull together records from different collections that share a common trait.

The difference is straightforward: collections answer “what project is this part of?” while tags answer “what kind of work is this?” Both are useful. Use them together and your library stays navigable even as it scales.

Filtering and finding records

Your library supports filtering across several dimensions at once:

• Type — narrow by file type (image, document, video, etc.)
• AI training status— see only records where AI training is allowed, restricted, or not available
• Tags — filter by one or more tags
• Collections — filter by collection membership

These filters combine, so you can quickly answer questions like “show me all photography tagged commercial where AI training is not available.” As your library grows from dozens to hundreds of records, filters become essential.

Grid and list views

You can switch between two views depending on what you need:

• Grid viewshows visual thumbnails — useful when you are browsing visually or reviewing a set of images
• List viewshows records in a compact table — better for scanning metadata, dates, and status at a glance

Switch between them freely. Your filter selections persist across view changes.

Bulk operations

When you need to make changes across many records at once, select multiple items and act on them in batch. You can:

• Add or remove tags from a group of records
• Move records into or out of collections
• Update properties across a selection

This is particularly useful after adding many files at once or when reorganising your library. Rather than editing records one by one, select what you need and make the change once.

Smart views

Smart views are pre-built filters that surface records matching specific criteria. Instead of manually setting filters each time, you can jump to a smart view and see exactly what you need.

For example, the “AI Training: Not Available” smart view shows every record where you have restricted AI training — a quick way to audit your restricted work. Other smart views help you find records by status, recency, or other useful groupings.

Getting started

The simplest approach: start with one or two collections that match how you already think about your work, add tags as natural categories emerge, and let smart views handle the rest. You can always reorganise later — nothing is permanent, and your sourcemarked records stay intact regardless of how you file them.

New to Sourcemark? Create your first record or learn about AI training availability.