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!*