Tagging

Blogging for these past twelve weeks has been an interesting experience. I like how hyperlinks in a blog allow me to write for an informed audience, while providing links to background material for those new to a topic. Libraries can use blogs to inform patrons about upcoming events, services, highlight collections and answer user questions. Because blogs are a bilateral communications tool they encourage patron participation, accountability, and transparency more than one-way news releases.

It was very interesting this week reading further into the pros and cons of tagging and folksonomies. As in last week's post, I remain intrigued by the way folksonomies can be a great complement to controlled classification methods, balancing out each other's weaknesses with their own unique strengths. In refuting the disadvantages of folksonomies in The Hive Mind: Folksonomies and User-Based Tagging, Kroski in many cases transforms the weaknesses of folksonomies into strengths.

First off, I found the that the
readings this week filled my head with all sorts of different thoughts on what
folksonomies are and their usefulness, and some big words were thrown in for
good measure (Kroski talks about ‘ontology’ and I nearly fell out of my chair).
So, after reading the articles and looking elsewhere for some definitions, I
have come up with my own definition for what ‘folksonomy’ means (with thanks to
Kroski and Funk and Wagnalls):

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.

Ah - I feel refreshed from my blog holiday, and ready to talk about folksonomies.  I think, as I assume I'm supposed to, that looking at folksonomies flows directly from the discussion of social tagging.  I started a Del.i.cious account at the start of the course, and have really enjoyed using it - especially as I browse websites at work and home - no more emailing myself long lists of links so they're "favourited" on my home PC too.

I was eager to read Ellyssa Kroski's article, The Hive Mind because just last week a co-worker was raving about her after meeting her at a conference. He has let me borrow her book "Web 2.0 for Librarians and Information Professionals" which is a great resource for those that are new to web 2.0.

I've found this week's topic to be really intriguing.  I've only recently (well, within the last year or so) gotten into the tagging thing but really hadn't thought about it too much.  Though I realized it was a very social thing to do, I really didn't connect it to LIS at all and Lee Rainie's article really showed me the ways in which tagging grew up from LIS.  It seems only reasonable that it come back to LIS, too, in that sense.

First Impressions and Eventual Realizations