LIS 9763

After the unit last week and our group project, I have a better understanding of what folksonomies are and how they are used. This week's case studies showed that tagging in library catalogues is the next big thing. I already sort of knew this because the University of Western Ontario and the University of Guelph both have new library catalogues in beta that have tagging features. When I first noticed the UWO beta library search (Encore) last fall, I didn’t know what that bundle of text that showed up on the left hand side (after searching) was. I now know this jumble of text is a tag cloud. While I understood the facets on the right hand side, I didn’t understand the point of tagging at the time. I thought it was annoying to have so much text on one webpage, particularly since due to the differing sizes of text on the tag cloud, the most visually prominent thing on Encore search  after entering a search query was the most popular tags, rather than the records. There were already so many facets on the right hand side and I didn’t understand why we needed these other texts (tags) on the left hand side as well.

After taking this course and learning about delicious, tagging, and folksonomies, I ran a couple of searches on Encore again and noticed that the words used in the tags were indeed different from those on the facets. Therefore, folksonomies may help bridge the gap between what language cataloguers choose for the materials and what words users will associate with the materials.
Kroski mentions how, "In creating traditional classification schemes, the cataloger is put in the position of fortune teller, in that he/she must predict permanent categories in advance. The problem with this model is that things change; countries change names, computer technology expands, and sometimes groups of people change the way they refer to themselves, i.e. Blacks, Negroes, Afro-American, African Americans. And in the world of the Web, things change fast."

When librarians held ultimate control over access to library materials and most things were found in the physical library space, top down hierarchy and controlled vocabulary made sense. Now days, we are expecting people to find their own things by providing computers terminals and OPACs, and at the same time, reducing the number of staff to help patrons. In that case, allowing folksonomies to populate library catalogues via things like tags might not be such a bad idea if it helps people find information better through an increased number of access points.

The readings this week did not really touch much on this, but I think the whole folkosonomies/tagging in libraries concept seems to be a culmination of a bunch of trends in both the real world and library world. For example, the mass adoption of internet, the rise of Google and hence the rise in popularity of keyword searching and natural language, etc. At the same time, in-house cataloging is becoming rarer and cataloging is being outsourced. And there is a big trend towards limiting or removing librarians from reference and moving them towards management of people and other areas. Also, librarians seem to lack direct input into the classification or content of the electronic resources that they are recommending people use, such as those found on databases. As Ou states, "A library may have access to multitudes of electronic journals via individual subscriptions, consortial arrangements, package deals and assorted aggregated databases, and these collections and title lists are ever-changing and the resources themselves perhaps natively variable." So how librarians traditionally think about and organize materials is becoming less relevant.  

Still, I wouldn’t advocate abandoning the old way in favor of folksonomies though. Unless we decide to retrain all librarians, the traditional hierarchical way of classification is still the best way for librarians to find library materials (since they actually understand this specialized system). And if librarians know how to find the material that the patron can’t find on their own, at least they are proving their worth. So a hybrid approach is probably good for now. At least until something better comes along.