Week 8: Folksonomies and traditional classification

Reading about folksonomies this week really drove home the positive benefits of using social tagging in a library context, and more broadly. Despite traditional cataloguing having done fairly well in library OPACs over time, there have been limitations to its practical use by the average person. In order for an individual to be able to exploit the library OPAC fully, it is necessary for them to become a sort of expert in the subject classification system.

Social tagging and the development of folksonomies allow for a more grassroots approach. Through the repeated and mass development of tags, a new "language" emerges whereby the terminology most commonly used by the layperson functions as a tool for remembering and recalling items. Over time the most commonly used tags are highlighted, creating a more accurate representation of the language people/users of the particular system are actually using every day.

Talking about folksonomies and seeing them in action, however, are two completely different issues. A few of the case studies we looked at this week  incorporated the LibraryThing for Libraries application into their catalogues, illustrating the potential for tagging in a library catalogue very well. The example I linked here is for the book "The God Delusion" , by Richard Dawkins (in the Claremont Colleges library catalogue). This is a great example, since the four subjects ascribed to this work are okay - except for "irreligion", which I don't think is a term many people would use. I would be more likely to use terms like "skepticism", "science", and "evolution", which have been added as tags, rather than "irreligion" to find this book. Users have tagged items in the OPAC with terms that are meaningful to them and those terms are meaningfully connected to other books by other users as well. The result is a collection of books collocated by users themselves. This allows something like a "tag conversation" - if users are sharing a common language, then individuals have more potential for discovering new information or books. I think using language that is more natural to us makes the information seeking process a little more smooth.

Carol Ou pointed to another interesting use of social tagging in the library OPAC, to facilitate access to electronic journals. These particular resources are so numerous and can change so regularly that social tagging would provide a cost-effective and easily-evolving method of ensuring that these journals can be found. Who better to label these resources than the very people who use them most?

With such positive results of tagging, I was a little surprised by the sharp criticisms offered by Liz Lawley. I think she did raise some valid concerns, though, particularly about inappropriate or misleading tags.  Amanda mentioned in our chat this week that LibraryThing actually has an algorithm for eliminating minority tags - I'm not totally sure how this works, but it sounds like a great solution to this problem, particularly in the context of a library catalogue.