Week 8; Fear Not the Folk: Folksonomies for Libraries

The more I read about folksonomies, the more I think that there is a definite place for them in the library. The experts no longer reign supreme, as Ellysa Kroski points out in The Hive Mind: Folksonomies and User-Based Tagging.

What really convinced me of their usefulness was LibraryThing for Libraries. When I read the articles this week, I came away with a list of advantages and disadvantages of folksonomies and hierarchical categorization systems. The focus of these articles was one versus the other. But when I turned to the libraries that were using LibraryThing, I was struck by the fact that they were having their cake and eating it too. As Amanda said in the Chat last night, it doesn’t have to be an either/or situation. Libraries like Claremont or Danbury did not throw out professional classification. The tagging that was done provided an additional way of accessing material. I am all for giving readers lots of choices, and numerous ways of looking up material. What I love about LibraryThing is that the disadvantages of one system are counterbalanced by the advantages of the other.

And there is no question that both traditional hierarchical systems and folksonomies have their disadvantages. The first is not current, is expensive, and does not reflect the language of everyday use. The second has poor recall and precision, no synonym control, and problems with ambiguous terms. In Social Consequences of Social Tagging, Liz Lawley reminds us that “describing things well is hard.” For example, in the Ann Arbor catalogue, people had used the tags “7” and “nothing” to describe Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Is this useful for anyone?! Poorly or maliciously tagged material can be a problem. But if users have access to both types of categorization, they can search for material in whatever way suits them best. They don’t, as Lawley points out, have to toss out “all expertise for non-expertise.” There should be room for both.

Tagging works because it is first and foremost beneficial for the individual. People can organize and recall the material that matters to them in a way that makes personal sense. In the Talking with Talis: the Library 2.0 Folksonomy Gang podcast, LibraryThing founder, Tim Spalding, points out that tagging builds the library around the user, not the library. It personalizes the library for people. Amazingly, it also engenders community. What a bonus! Spalding claims that he would welcome research on the usefulness of LibraryThing. Hard data, not just anecdotal evidence, would certainly further our knowledge about folksonomies and their actual usage.

In this podcast, Karen Schneider, Director of the Librarians' Internet Index, called for librarians to play with tagging and get to know folksonomies better. She suggested a interesting idea. Librarians could take on the role of tag advisors. Librarians certainly have the know-how to do so.