Folksonomy vs. LCSH: why can't we all just get along?

I can't help but let my imagination run a bit wild over all the possibilities here...

No one seems be be arguing that Folksonomies are bad, or that traditional subject headings and controlled vocab are bad. Both have some great qualities to offer. Both have drawbacks. I think that the challenge might not be to argue for one or the other, but to find a way to combine the best of both worlds.

I like the idea of a "collabulary" that is presented on the Wikipedia page. They define it as:

"a compromise between the two: a team of classification experts collaborates with content consumers to create rich, but more systematic content tagging systems."

Granted, this sounds a bit over-simplified, but I like the concept. I'm not 100% sure how it would work in practice though. Ou suggests a distributed classification system where, if I get it, cataloguers do the original descriptive cataloguing and leave the subject analysis to the users. This seems great to me! I think she does well to highlight what may be a major stumbling block: will users participate? If not...it doesn't work at all.

Especially in a university setting, I like the idea of user-generated subject information. Imagine begin able to see what resources within a catalogue other students at Western have tagged as "reference interview" or as "reader's advisory" or as releveant to both "LIS 775" and "LIS 503"? It definitely has the potential to aid in comprehensive literature searches if previous students, studying the same topics, have already identified some good, relevant resources. (as Marco points out in a comment to my previous post, it is unlikely that someone would be lucky enough to stumble upon such a tag, but in a smaller, more specific community, it might be more likely? Still wishful thinking?)

Hmmm....could this even lead to cheating? Tagging the correct response to a reference search? Would it be cheating if I found a tag "LIS 757 - folksonomy essay" (I know, wishful thinking) and used all of those resources for my essay? Do I cite that tag since it did much of the research for me? Now I'm just rambling, but hmm....I am sure that, as user tagging develops, we will see a development in additional student code of ethics to match.

Libraries: Tagging and bookmarking and folksonomies, oh my!

I think that there is a real potential for libraries to take advantage of these tools. It provides the perfect way to provide access to information that is targeted. It seems like an ideal way to help patrons navigate the internet and make them aware of links that they might find relevant.

The four public libraries seem to be using delicious well to highlight items of interest to their patrons, however some do not seem to be tagging very effectively as there are many many tags that are difficult to navigate. I think that they would benefit from creating some larger, more general tag names to include with their more specific tags so that they could create some larger, more easy to spot, category labels within the cloud. As they currently stand, the tag clouds are huge, and have very little variation - it is a large list of every single bit of content, rather than a guide to general content. I realize that I am trying to put order to something that is not necessarily supposed to be ordered...but I do think it would be helpful. I don't know what can be done, but the size of the cloud on Lansing Public Library's is crazy!!!! The Thomas Ford PL seems to have the same problem. Who would be willing to navigate that? Am I being anal and missing the whole point?!? Hmmmm.....

The one for Seldovia PL is much better as every entry seems to be tagged with one of their "main categories" as well as the more specific tags. La Grange seems to be quite small so the tagging is difficult to judge just yet.

One problem is definitely ensuring that patrons understand what it is and how to use it. The Maui Community College Library does this very well by providing del.icio.us feeds on their About Us page. They highlight that it is Our Interests and provide a direct link to the articles. The recent tags are totally accessible to someone who knows nothing about del.icio.us, and those interested in searching for more can go to their del.icio.us site to search further. They seem to have set up main categories of internet, web, libraries, politics, web 2.0 that serve as main categories for them.

Penn Tags is great! I like that they provide the "about" link to describe the site. It looks very professional and I think that having the tag cloud at the center top makes it more visible and easy to use. This is a good resource and, because it is directed to a specific university community, it is likely that significant tags categories will quickly be established. I also think that university students are a patron community that may be more likely to take advantage of something like this.

Tagging: users customizing the web

I am a bit overwhelmed, but admiring, of all the possibilities that tagging and folksonomies open up. As Mathes points out, without tagging, metadata only encompasses the author or professional's definition of 'what something is about'. Tagging allows users to do this and share their definitions with others. Really, shouldn't users be able to decide what something is about? The 'official' metadata attached to a link may have little personal value a user. In an online environment where we have grown accustomed to customizing everything - from the colours of our email interface, the Firefox toolbars we want to see, the appearance of our homepage, the creation of 'my store' at sites like Amazon.ca - it does seem to be the next logical step that we customize the entire content of the web to make the information more meaningful, useful, and convenient to each of us. Porter points out that tagging, sb and folksonomies allows us to "speak the user's language" and make searching easier.

This personal classification of web content allows for collaboration in information gathering and easy sharing of relevant sites of interest. Why is this a "social software" and not just a personal customization? As Sinha states, this allows for like-minded individuals to share their findings and their tags. This makes the communication of collaborative research efforts much easier. Our tagging of sites with the 'LIS 757' tag is a great example. We are able to share articles, comment on articles, maintain lists of links very easily. Otherwise...we would be sending millions of emails with "Hey check this out!" note (or really, further in the past...passing out a printed bibliography or memos of useful resources that would need to be located all over again). I think that it provides a way to communicate and organize findings in a manner that is convenient and useful to both the finder and the others in their research group.

Beyond groups that are explicitly linked together, tagging allows for researchers to find other like-minded individuals and follow their findings as well.

What I like about distributed research via tagging & bookmarking:

• ease of access to the information tagged (a simple click takes you there)
• the ability to create a collaborative group 'bibliography' with various tags that represent various perspectives/subject divisions
• the ability to share these findings within a larger community (imagine some LIS student writing a paper on social software in public libraries...what a jackpot if she discovers the 'LIS 757' del.icio.us tag!).
• moving beyond an author's or professional's interpretation of their work and providing more relevant references. I think this is very striking if you think of, for example, a media student tagging links: what the item is "about" (i.e. George Bush commenting on Iraq on location at some ranch) may have very little to do with why the media student is interested in it, tagging allows for a very focussed classification (i.e. media images of the 'modern cowboy').
• great for new and current topics which may have not been well categorized or identified in mainstream circles yet - this may be especially relevant for new technologies.
  

What I don't like about it:

• tagging is so easy that its seems that only slightly relevant items are often tagged
• when not used well, or with no additional tagging, commenting, or organization - it feels a bit like a pile of articles dropped on your desk with no explanation of why they are there.
  

I definitely need to start making better use of tagging - it is still not a regular habit for me when researching, despite the fact that I do much of my researching online. Like wikis, I wish that I had been more familiar with this technology and its potential educational uses earlier in my FIMS career! *Sigh!*

Case Studies: one wiki, two wiki, good wiki, bad wiki.

I've grouped these into two groups as some invited contributions and some did not permit it - I felt like this was a significant factor in defining the wikis (unless I've completely missed something and just couldn't figure out how to edit on the "Internal wikis").

Internal wikis
Looking at the Bull Run wiki, the SJCPL wiki and the USC wiki, I think they must have been established as wikis for internal collaborative development reasons? This is sort of stated on the SJCPL Subject Guides as the EDIT button has "librarians only" added. This site has the feel of a wiki as it resembles Wikipedia in design & layout, however acts as a website to its users as they are not able to contribute themselves, but only use the information provided. I do think that this is a good use of a wiki as it allows for multiple librarians to work together to create the subject list without the same need to try and moderate comments. The subject guides, however, could likely be enriched if users were also encouraged to contribute. Additionally, a statement to explain the site and its goals would benefit users.

Both the Bull Run and USC wiki seem to look and largely function as a website (albeit not a really well-designed one). They have little resemblance to a wiki - if they do allow editing, they don't advertise it and I couldn't find it. As a wiki, they can be modified more readily than a website and multiple people can have access. As with the SJCPL wiki, this certainly has advantages internally, however I would question whether it is the best solution?

"Open" wikis
These are wikis that allow and encourage contribution and editing from users (whether users are required to regtister or not): PPL's BookLoversWiki, Butler WikiRef, BizWiki and the Wyoming Authors Wiki. All of these wikis except BookLoversWiki do well to explicitly state that contribution is welcome and explain what they are all about right on the main page. On the BookLoversWiki, this informaiton is available in the FAQ section. This is important to ensure that users understand how the wiki works.

All four of these wikis provide some sort of index to the content, although the organization offered by BookLoversWiki and WikiRef are the easiest to navigate. A significant con of Butler's Wiki Ref is its lack of a search function (the site tells me that I can use the search box on the top left....but I don't see one there....could you guys see one?). There is some variation in the appearance and design of these sites, and I imagine this would encourage or discourage participation. WikiRef is by far the most amateur looking site. BizWiki is not especially attractive to use, but is in a familiar Wikipedia format. I think that WAW and BookLoversWiki are both well-designed and appealing. The "featured review" or "featured article" that is included on the BizWiki and BookLoversWiki are great not only to alert users to good content, but also to give users some sense of what the content is at a glance.

Thoughts on Wikis

Wikis seem to me, to be ideal for communicating information. As Schiff points out, they are “perfectly configured to be current”. The ease of update and opportunity for multiple authoring and editing seem to make wikis an ideal place to publish information that needs to be current or come from various sources.

Before delving into this week’s information, I was really only familiar with the idea of using a wiki as it applied to collaborative work between employees working on a common project. I had no idea it was such an easy thing to set up and start using…I am surprised that it is not more commonly used, but I would venture a guess that most people are simply not aware of the possibilities.

I think it is certainly interesting to note Lamb’s statement that wikis are ego-less. This has interesting implications in our copyright-intense/intellectual-property world.

Wandering just a bit off topic....I am interested in reading this book:

Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything

Has anyone read it? Thoughts? Is it any good? Relevant?

The authors have even created a wiki called The Wikinomics Playbook in the hope that “this book will transcend its physical form to become a living, real-time, collaborative document, co-created by leading thinkers.”* Their viewpoint is definitely corporate, however, they are tapping into the social software phenomenon…interesting. I wonder if some of their business ideas would translate well to Not-for-Profits too...?

* quoted from “Introduction to the Book” from http://www.wikinomics.com/book/

Great ideas for wikis in libraries

I think the some of the best examples of how libraries can use wikis (beyond any internal collaboration with co-workers) are Farkas’ suggestions that wikis be used for community information and catalogue annotations.

With a user population that is likely familiar with sites like Amazon.ca that support user comments, adding reviews, links, and book comments to a catalogue record would enrich the patron’s searching capabilities. It would be great to received “if you liked this one, try this one” recommendations from other patrons who love the same books as you do. A patron may even come to recognize one or two users with similar tastes and follow their recommendations closely. This could be a great place for librarians to provide reader’s advisory as well. Hmmm….

A wiki could very easily become a community hub, where activities and events are posted, as well as cancellations/adjustments, comments, warnings, offers to car-pool to events, etc. To facilitate the compiling of all of this information, completely up-to-date, in one location would be an excellent service for a library to offer. Spam would undoubtedly be a problem and would need to be moderated, but this is true of paper community bulletin boards to a certain degree as well.

I think the an important factor in the success of such a wiki would be in ensuring that it was somewhat aesthetically pleasing, as well as organized and navigatible for users. As Lamb points out that wikis' traditional ugliness and lack of explicit organization often turn users off.