LIS 9763

If you find that I am type folkesonomies a lot, I apologize in advance -- it's tough when you're programmed from birth to add an extra letter into a word because it's your last name! I'll try to keep a grasp on it.

I find folksonomies both fascinating and challenging. I work in consulting, and a lot of what I do is Information Architecture work for government. I am constant challenged to evaluate the language used and create a happy medium (the ideal; it very rarely exists!) between social language behaviours and business jargon. This is especially complicated when attempting to optimize headings and metadata for search. Users are so accustomed to getting what they like the first time around, yet very few individual sites have the time and manpower to put into constantly evaluating and re-evaluating search behaviours of users, and then tweaking the content to such.

I think folksonomies are changing the ways we organize information, and access information. And I think, for the most part, it's a good thing. The Kroski article briefly address the long tail, and I think this is one of the huge advantages of folksonomies. User groups that have previously been excluded or treated as the least important, are now not only included but in many ways controlling the vocabulary. I also think the "signal loss" in traditional classification schemes has been a problem for a long time, one that couldn't be resolved (or at least, addressed) until folksonomies came into play.

i don't think folksonomies can replace traditional classification. But I do believe they can be used in tandem with one another, especially in the case of a library catalogue. I think it's important to have a traditional taxonomy at the base of the catalogue, but searching can and should be supplemented by tagging, allowing users to see not only the "appropriate" or controlled term for something, but also the various language used that is not traditional.

There are plenty of risk involved with implementing a tagging system, the least of which being language that is not appropriate for a library catalogue environment. You run the risk of expletives, racist, or sexist language (among other options). Now I'm sure libraries can create block-lists that ensure these types of words can't be tagged; but then that seems to contract the intention of folksonomies, which is a user-established vocabularies.

Another risk is the lack of consistency with how to tag. Delicious, Flickr and others all have different ways of reading tags -- spaces between terms, commas between terms, etc. This complicates the quality of tags and the comprehension of them.

As far as the Case Studies are concerned, I'm impressed with the tags at the Danbury Library Catalogue. I particularly like the use of a tag cloud; I think that provides more insight into the common terms people are using. I also feel slightly ashamed to admit this, but I didn't know about LibraryThing for Libraries! and with what I've seen I'm quite impressed at how it enhances the library's search results. I wonder if any studies have been done on changes in patron behaviour when faced with a tag cloud. Are they more inclined to borrow different books, or do they tend to just stick with their original plan? I know personally I tend to be heavily influenced by suggestions, tags, and even just links (I'll spend hours in Wikipedia!), but I wonder if that's my nature or if it's true for more users.