You are hereBlogs / andrea's blog / critical mass
critical mass
After reading through this week’s material a few things come to mind. First of all, as Ellyssa Kroski explains, folksonomies won’t replace LC classification for traditional libraries. But since the web would be impossible to classify in this traditional way, folksonomies are pretty handy. What they lose out on in hierarchical searching, they make up for by simply getting the job done.
And folksonomies do allow for their own type of hierarchical searching, as the Kome article explains. I also found some cases of a 2.0 kind of hierarchy in social bookmarking software, where it was possible toclick on one tag word, and be given a new sub-list of related tag words. In this way it was possibly to quite effectively narrow down a search. If enough people add tags, the most relevant will become prominent and theirrelevant, or worse, malicious, will become tiny enough that they can be easily ignored.
I also think that since there is just so much on the internet, it is not so bad that searchers lose out onsome hits by using the wrong synonyms. Chances are they will find somethinguseful regardless. If we continue to think of folksonomies as being about "discovery" and "community" rather than as a replacement for traditional research, then low recall is not such a major concern. Although Liz Lawley is right when she says that classifying things is hard, when there is a critical enough mass of people tagging a particular item, chances are that the most relevant terms are also going to be the most often used.
As for the case studies, using library thing was a good idea for the Blais catalogue, because it allows them to fill up their records with tags, without relying on students to slowly catch on and then take the time to participate. That said, I did a search on the book Blink, which had a healthy number of tags, lesser-read books, of which there are many in academic libraries, aren’t going to have enough participation. This leaves room for irrelevant tags to be given too much prominence. Now that I think of it, I’m not sure if there even was an option for members of the library community to add additional tags. At any rate, the interface they chose worked well, LC subject headings were clearly shown first, and tags came a little later. The Ann Arbor catalogue offers a good example of tags not working very well. All of the tags are the same size, and whether this is because so few have been entered or the site doesn’t create clouds of various-sized words, it makes for an ineffective and unprofessional looking record when joke-tags have the same apparent relevancy as real ones.
I am wondering what libraries will have to do to encourage users to add tags. Perhaps by letting them create their own little libraries, as in library thing, they'll be more inclined to participate. An article about tagging that I once read put it nicely when it said "we all use the grocery store, but few of us are going to take time to tidy up the shelves while we're there." There has to be a reason for users to create tags beyond simply making records better. One beta-version of a 2.0 catalogue that I saw presented last winter offered participants a chance to win an ipod. There must be a better way.
- andrea's blog
- Login to post comments
I agree with your idea that folksonomies should be about discovery and community rather than about traditional perceptions of research. I actually wonder if allowing for such information discovery, particularly in a library catalogue, will lead to more effective research practises for people unfamiliar with traditional cataloguing. It allows for connections between items that might not be traditionally associated together in a library catalogue, creating more opportunity for serendipitously coming across interesting books and information.
I agree that the joke-tags can make the library catalogue look unprofessional. In the podcast that we were given to listen to this week, someone gave a really good example of how if someone on the internet tagged a nazi-related item the "so-called holocaust", it would be largely ignored or washed-out by the rest of the community, but if this happens in the OPAC it can have very negative consequences because the OPAC is considered an "authority" and many people may not understand that it was another user, and not the library, that had published this tag. That is getting into some dangerous territory...
I like your idea about the personal libraries as an incentive for people so they will tag OPAC items. I was thinking the same thing. I think the reason why a lot of social tagging sites are popular are because people can create and classify their own collections- be it of photos, websites, or books. I think it would give patrons a feeling of ownership over the collection and encourage them to use the collection more. I'm not so hot about giving away an ipod as an incentive- it doesn't seem like it would generate enough interest for people to carry it the whole tagging concept forward.
Hi Andrea:
I don't see it as being too big a deal to offer gifts for tagging, but as was said, it may not be the best way to retain interest in tagging.
I definitely agree that sometimes irrelevant/offensive tags show up, but I don't think that should be a deterrent from using a tagging system. If the library would like to be disassociated from the implications of bad tags, I think it would be best for them to add the text "user generated tags" to the field description, for example, or even just a general notice that "the tags generated here may not reflect the views of the library and it's staff". We can also hope that irrelevant tags get edited out either by librarians or by the system as they become less popular.
"Everything I say is a lie...
... in fact, I'm lying to you right now..."
Andrea,
It's an interesting concept. I wonder if the reward could be a better personal "history"? I know that I like to see the history of what I've read, and if I tag those books, I could find more like those - in that way, tags could be used to create an almost Amazon-like recommendation system, but using tags and a patron's own browsing history!
Hi Andrea,
You bring up a good point about the issue of encouraging users to add tags. I think that from the readings and case studies that we've seen this week it is clear that the wisdom generated from folksonomies comes from the collective masses, not from a few individual taggers.
If we are to fully make use of our patrons tags, how will we encourage them? This is yet another opportunity for libraries and librarians to reach their users.
Hi Andrea,
I agree that offering a few prizes to the public to encourage tagging will likely not have a widespread effect, although it should help to raise general awareness and make a few people very happy. It seems that there is already a great deal of interest in tagging out there and this interest is growing. To help improve organization and retrieval, more thoughtful and extensive tagging practices are what are needed. Perhaps our use of tagging will simply develop gradually over time (with some helpful encouragement and guidelines from libraries) until it becomes an accepted way of doing things. It looks like we're all going to discover tagging best practices together!