Integrating Social Bookmarking into Library Content

MTagger Integrating Social Bookmarking into Library Content Ken Varnum Web Systems Manager University of Michigan Library Michigan Library Association 2009

Introduction

A Brief History of Social Bookmarking
Late 1990s – lots of small networked bookmark services (links in the protocloud)
Early 2000s saw Del.icio.us come into being
Added tagging to online bookmarks
Coined term “Social Bookmarking ”
Gained millions of users, eventually sold to Yahoo!

Tagging Moves Into Mainstream
Facebook
Technorati
Flickr
Amazon
Twitter (#mla2009)
Etc., etc., etc.

Why?
Seems that everyone feels the need to categorize & organize (not just us librarians!)
Tool for us to share our knowledge, expertise, opinion
Leave tracks for the future – Kilroy Was Here

Tagging at MLibrary
Enhance findability of objects
Enable future researchers to follow existing paths
Generate source of improved metadata
Let our patrons find things a second time

Tagging Goodness is Baked Right In
Web site
Catalog
Digital images
Digital publications
Bookmarklet for everything else

Usage vs. Expectations
Enhance findability of objects
Enable future researchers to follow existing paths
Generate source of improved metadata
Let our patrons find things a second time

Usage
As of 11/04/09
2395 total users (1015 active)
5033 tags (4145 unique)
11552 items tagged

I Tried It, But I Didn’t Inhale
Majority of taggers tag one item. Once.
Faculty, staff, students
Not as broadly / deeply as we’d like
Most items tagged by one person
Most items tagged with a single tag

A Note on Privacy
Tagging tied to U-M single sign-on (uniqname); guest accounts welcome
Accountability & public face
Balance of anonymity and sharing
Most feedback on this issue from a single source

Usability Study
Conducted over four months in summer 2008
Two students at U-M School of Information
Librarians on steering committee
Heuristic evaluation
In-depth user interviews

Usability: Interface Problems

Usability: Purpose of Tagging
Unclear to users
Personal motivations are stronger than social motivations
“What’s in it for me” not apparent
Tagging is a "Librarian" thing

Usability Recommendations
Tag cloud display on pages
Tag cloud display in MTagger
Preference for tag display alongside traditional search results
Handling of “collections”
Workflow

Lessons Learned
Motivations
Outcomes
Enable personal reference library
Contextualize the material

Motivations
To find things again
To pull together research
To share with others

Outcomes
Easier sharing:
Tags
Tagged items
User lists
Publish to other social networking tools

Personal Reference Library
Tagging is less a goal than a byproduct
Be more like Zotero, CiteULike,
Reinvention of ‘My Library’

Context is King
A tagged item shouldn’t wander the wilderness
What’s related?
How can I use it?

In a Broader Context
There’s an RLG group devoted to social media
A survey is underway at Survey Monkey: http://bit.ly/4xN52Z
A few findings from our analysis – courtesy of Karen Smith-Yoshimura at RLG

Some Observations
Great variety of sites – many new
Success tied to objective and audience, not necessarily traffic
Value in leveraging “sense of community”
Some sites heavily moderated, others not at all
Strict credentialing limits effectiveness
Lots of features of little value if not used and require more documentation, overhead
Courtesy Karen Smith-Yoshimura, RLG

Some More Observations
Few sites use ranking, filtering mechanisms, use patterns to guide visitors
Institution-specific sites have fewer contributions than aggregate sites
Tags contributed on network-level of more value
Tagging is most useful when there is no existing metadata (e.g. photos, videos, audio)
Need “critical mass” and “sense of community” (existing or created)

Why Contribute? (Prelim)
Tie-in to community of fellow enthusiasts
Ongoing conversation from own lives
Pragmatic
Feeling of contributing to the “brand” of the institution or community
Enhance own reputation

MTagger’s Goals Today
Put tagging in the flow
Put emphasis on the patron
Tagging as background activity; saving as foreground
Improve the interface for secondary discovery
Mirlyn (catalog) is model

Bigger Picture
Benefit to scale (delicious, flickr)
Benefit to academic (“serious”) focus
Mechanism needed for sharing tags across libraries

Open APIs
Programmatically query for an item/user/tag, find out what associated elements are
Uses include research guides, current awareness
Are we already pulling old Mirlyn items into Vufind Mirlyn via MTagger?

Open Code
Current MTagger is Available
Contact me for link
Future code will also be available

Open Tagging
We would be happy to explore building social bookmarking into other library sites using our code; code is available.
The more the merrier
Want to tag in our pool?
Contact me

Concluding Thoughts
Social Bookmarking is a social phenomenon
Has a clear motivation for the tagger – find my stuff again
Connect that motivation to the library patron
Research trails will follow

Thank You
Email: [email_address]
Twitter: @varnum
RSS4Lib (blog): http://www.rss4lib.com/
Slides: http://www.slideshare.net/KenVarnum
MTagger: http://www.lib.umich.edu/mtagger/

Integrating Social Bookmarking into Library Content

by Ken Varnum on Nov 04, 2009

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Integrating Social Bookmarking into Library Content — Presentation Transcript