Week 7: Social bookmarking and tagging

First Impressions and Eventual Realizations

I had first only thought about the implications that RSS feeds could have with relation to revolutionizing the way we organize and find our favorite sites and information on the web. Though RSS does provide an interesting alternative option for accessing the sites we like to visit most often, more specifically those sites that have regularly updated content, I hadn't really considered the obvious similarities between RSS and social bookmarking tools like del.icio.us. And I say obvious because the word 'bookmark' is right there in the name of the application, but I guess I had only previously thought of the activities associated with these tools as 'tagging' and hadn't really made the mental leap from the personally selected and generally single-user oriented world of RSS to the shareable bookmarking capabilities of tagging tools. Kind of funny that it was staring me in the face, yet these are most often the easiest details to overlook.

The thing that is the most interesting about social bookmarking tools to me is just that - they are social and embody all the most essential components of web 2.0 technology. Not only can you save the things you like best, as with RSS, but you can share them with the world by adding appropriate tag words. As ever, I found the video by The Common Craft Show the best intro to the topic as it highlighted all of the essential components of social bookmarking. One thing that always bothered me about using the 'bookmark' or 'favorites' function (depending on browser) of web browsers was that organizing them was a constant and often laborious process. With tools like del.icio.us, a person may gather a hundred bookmarks and, as long as they are consistent with the tags they apply, can always easily find that content later without going through a time consuming organizational process like creating folders within the 'bookmarks' tab on Firefox. The sharing element really is in keeping with the spirit of web 2.0 as bookmarks, by virtue of the tags applied, have the potential to be shared not only with the public at large (as they search for tags that interest them) by can also be specifically shared with designated groups - just as we are doing through our class tagging using a very specific tag that allows all of our classmates to find our tagged content. I think the del.icio.us taggingwe have been sharing through this class is one of the numerous examples of web 2.0 technology that is so immeasurably helpful in supporting a distance education class. It helps to add another dimension to the communication and exchange of ideas we can have with our classmates.

Another great element of the concept of tagging in general is the potential it has to radically shift the way we think of classification of information and subsequent retrieval of information. No longer are we librarians and cataloguers the only ones with the power to decide what something is and where it should belong. With these tools, the user has the power to assign tags that are meaningful to them and with which they will be able to search for information in a way they understand.

From my recent work experience, I can say there is one government department in particular that is making some pretty groundbreaking strides with relation to information management in general and the use of social tagging to organize electronic files. The basic idea is, operating in an work environment where no central repository or document management system has yet been implemented, they wish to enhance employees' ability to retrieve the information they need by allowing them to add their own 'social tags' to documents (using the 'properties' function of MSWord) and using an enterprise search capability. Though the system is still in its 'theoretical' stage, I think simply being able to give the people who work with and create the information the power to assign a form of classification that is meaningful to them (and those in their circle of colleagues) is a really powerful and interesting idea.

Week's Readings and Case Studies

As I seem to have gone on somewhat of a rambling tirade about tagging and social bookmarking, I think this week I will present a few of my reactions and ideas stimulated by the week's readings and case studies thusly:

Reading

Tagging, Lee Rainie (Pew Internet & American Life Project Memo)

This article/interview with the author of Everything is Miscellaneous allowed me to make a mental connection between the concept of social tagging and the evolving trends of web design and information architecture on the web. Web design is tending away from highly hierarchical structures (generally designed by the technical and web-savvy and are often un-intuitive to the general user) toward more user-driven design. Such user driven design, as I have been fortunate to witness during my work, is generally a combination of bottom-up and top-down design that relies heavily on focus groups and workshops that solicit suggestions from the user....what is useful to them, what types of things are they trying to accomplish by visiting the site, etc. I find the essence of social tagging, where the users define and label the information they use in a way they understand it, to be very similar to these current trends in web design.

Case Studies: tagging use in libraries

• It's great to see that libraries have taken up tagging as yet another means of providing users with links to helpful resources.
• del.icio.us' 'link roll' capability is great in that it gives the libraries the ability to use the tagging elements without having to refer users to external sites for compilations of links - they can be built right into their existing site. (Buley Library Physics Subject Guide, Chelmsford Public Library :: Subject Guide :: Consumer Information Resources, Lupton Library - Interesting Websites, Seldovia Public Library)
• PennTags: It's great to see a library that actually implemented a tagging system of their own, though I must say I've never found tag clouds to be particularly user-friendly. I tend to think they scare people away as they look like a giant mass of 'too much information.' However, I think they've done a good job of implementing a tagging capability that their patrons seem to be using and getting some benefit from.

Well, that's it for this week. Until next....