Implications of Social Tagging For LibrariesBarbara AlbeeOVGTSLMay 7, 2009Tag Clouds

AgendaDefinitions TaggingTag Cloud and FolksonomyMethodsdeliciousflickerLibraryThingPros and ConsExamplesLibrary StudiesILS InvolvementFutureQuestions and Comments

Associated Terms in the Library LiteratureWeb 2.0User generated content or user created tagsSocial softwareSocial classification or indexingPeer productionUncontrolled indexesCommunity contributions to catalogsCollaborative tagsAmateur bibliographyFolksonomies

What is Tagging?Popularized by websites associated with Web 2.0, tagging associates freely determined keywords (tags) with a particular resource.What can be tagged:PhotosURLsPodcastsBlog postsComputer gamesMusicVideoTagging lets you build a set of links that remains updateable and discoverable for a long time.

Tagging MethodsdeliciousSocial bookmarking service.Primary use of delicious is to store your bookmarks online.Use tags to organize and remember your bookmarks.more flexible system than foldersPotential for collaborative organization of resources. Connecting people and information online.

delicious

Tagging MethodsFlickr Image and video hosting website.Popular Web site for users to share personal photographs.Photo submitters organize images using tags.Also used for tagging Web links (sites, pages, and blog postings)Online photo management system.

flicker

More Social Tagging SitesCiteULike - http://www.citeulike.org/Connotea - http://www.connotea.org/Digg - http://www.digg.com/ESP Game - http://www.gwap.com/gwap/gamesPreview/espgame/Technorati - http://www.technorati.com/WordPress - http://wordpress.orgYouTube - http://www.youtube.com/Wordle - http://www.wordle.net/Frassle (http://www.frassle.org)Furl (http://www.furl.net)Simpy (http://www.simpy.com)Spurl (http://www.spurl.com)

Enter Tag CloudsA user interface element commonly associated with folksonomy datasets.A visual depiction of content tags used on a website. depicted in a larger font or otherwise emphasizeddisplayed order is generally alphabeticalSelecting a single tag within a tag cloud will generally lead to a collection of items that are associated with that tag.

Tag Cloud from LibraryThing

Tag Cloud from AuthorStream

Types of Tag CloudsAtag cloud for each item.Global tag clouds. where the frequencies are aggregated over all items and usersTags are used as a categorization method for content items.

How Tag Clouds WorkA tag cloud is a set of related tags.produced via computer algorithmstypical tag clouds have between 30 and 150 tagsweights are represented using font sizes or other visual cluesinteractivecan appear in alphabetical order or in a random orderyou can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes

FolksonomyThe result of personal free tagging of information and objects (anything with a URL) for one's own retrieval. The tagging is done in a social environment (usually shared and open to others). Folksonomy is created from the act of tagging by the person consuming the information" (Vander Wal, 2007). Since 2004, social software applications and their use of tagging have continued to increase in popularity particularly in sites dedicated to such applications.

This is the Question of the DayFolksonomies have the potential to add much value to library catalogs by enabling users to store, maintain, and organize items of interest in the catalog using their own tags. What do you think?

Tagging Methods for Collaborative CatalogingLibraryThingSocial networking site for cataloging books.Features tagged records, member ratings, recommendations and reviews of books owned by registered members.Use of Z39.05 to find cataloging data for specific books and application program interface (API) to generate ISBNs. Links are forged via the tags with other sites and other web users. Tags categorize books by how users think of them.

LibraryThing

Potential Advantages of Tagging for LibrariesTagging supplements library catalogs.Folksonomies are inclusive, current and facilitate discovery.Improves browsing.information retrieval benefitsBroader description.improves breadth of coverageUsers can’t find something if they don’t know LCSH, this way they can use terms they are familiar with.

Proponents Would Say…Increases number of classifiers.More metadata available for images.more tags, additional termsFacilitates tags for foreign languages.Neologisms and common terminology added.A way to display subject headings visually.Traditional OPACs and ILS were designed in the early days of the Web and have not kept pace with changing times.

But don’t let me convince you….

Tagging StudiesSpiteri (2007) Study of 3 tagging sites showed that less that 25% of the tags were ambiguous, most follow NISO guidelines.Lund & Washburn (2008) Study shows that LibraryThing tags provide more descriptive information and more access points to library monographs than LCSH.

Lund & Washburn Study

AF150 Asperger's syndrome 450 AS (Psychiatry) 450 Asperger syndrome 450 Asperger's disorder 450 Autistic psychopathy 450 High-functioning autism 450 Psychopathy, Autistic 550 Autism spectrum disorders ‡w g 550 Syndromes ‡w g 150 Autism 450 Autistic disorder 550 Autism spectrum disorders ‡w g 550 Hyperlexia

Tagging StudiesMorrison (2008) In Web searching, search engines still return slightly more relevant results, but results returned by both a folksonomy and a search engine were better than those returned by any single search engine.Kipp (2008) Tags used as guides to search terms. Searchers using tags as a starting point. Randomized tagging vs. online.

Potential Disadvantages of Tagging for LibrariesNo authority control.Misspellings, abbreviations, accuracy issuesNo one checking inaccuracies.Tags are personal, no broad applications.Addition of non-descriptive tags.Tags are less precise.

Controversies for LibrariesTraditional view that only professionally trained catalogers are qualified to assign appropriate access points to library materials.LCSH can only be assigned by trained catalogers.OPACs contain richly described data in a consistent format.

Tagging StudiesWetterstrom (2008) New Zealand study showed that 75% of tags did not match LCSH, tags most often were popular terms or related terms from a different point of view.Gelernter (2007) Quantitative analysis of collaborative tags to look at differences in controlled vs. uncontrolled vocabularies. LCSH prevails.

ILS Involvement in Social Networking SoftwareSirsiDynixThe current direction for e-Library and Enterprise, the flagship SirsiDynix public interface products, is built on the belief that the value in tagging functionality become really apparent when there is a critical mass of data created by a community. Our intent therefore is to tap into as broad a community as possible. SirsiDynix is actively pursuing partnerships with communities that transcend the library industry. Examples of such communities include the users of LibraryThing, Goodreads, and ChiliFresh. We are finding ways to integrate tagging content from communities like that into the SirsiDynix public interface experience.Allen County Public Library

SirsiDynix at ACPL screen 1

SirsiDynix at ACPL screen 2

ILS InvolvementIII’s EncoreEncore elegantly presents all manner of discovery tools, such as faceted search results, Tag Cloud, Did You Mean...?, Popular Choices and Recently Added suggestions, and RightResult™ relevance ranking. No matter what ILS your library uses, Encore provides a reliable solution for taking discovery to a whole new level. Encore even makes use of user contributions as a tool for discovery by blending in cool community participation features, such as tagging.In short, Encore creates an entirely new user experience of your library. It makes finding as easy as searching, leverages Web 2.0 technologies and practices, and delivers a complete discovery-to-delivery solution that is appealing, sophisticated, and just plain fun!University of Nevada Las Vegas

Encore Example at UNLV

ILS InvolvementVTLSWe are indeed planning on providing the ability to add tags to books and see tags added by others, along with a tag cloud. This will be available in the software prior to its planned release this Summer. One other note that you might find interesting is that we are also planning on having an interface in our Virtua product, internal code name Chamo, with a seamless interface with Drupal, a Content Management System. Based on feedback from our customers, we believe that the future direction of the OPAC lies with being another type of content provided by a website which contains many varied types of content. Our goal is to allow customers to use Drupal as the front end meaning that they can easily customize the website to meet their particular needs while also providing a single sign-on and single search to access all content of the website, including the OPAC.

ILS InvolvementPolarisWe have new initiative with reviews and tagging. We’ve partnered with ChiliFresh for reviews and just recently, LibraryThing for tagging. The ChiliFresh integration has been released into the field and Brownsburg Public has it: http://www.brownsburg.lib.in.us/If you do a popular material search (harry potter), you’ll see many reviews. Note in our upcoming Version 3.5, we eliminate the pop-up window and will incorporate the reviews using AJAX technology –very cool! The LibraryThing integration is completed, but is not yet released into the field (although we have a customer Glendora Public Library, CA) using it in a not-quite-transparent way.

ILS InvolvementTLCWe have community features for book clubs, discussion groups, shared interests, and Web participation for:Tagging List sharing User reviews And search and display features for:RSS result feeds RSS indexing from popular or local Web sites

ILS InvolvementFollettThis is a feature we are considering for one of our future releases of Destiny. No definite date for this at this time.For examples of libraries working with LibraryThing go to the LT wiki: http://www.librarything.com/wiki/index.php/LTFL:Libraries_using_LibraryThing_for_Libraries

Other ProductsAquaBrowserSearch and discovery platform for libraries. The product assigns the tags, it looks at certain fields in the bib record and calculates frequency and utilizes weighting of the fields.No staff time is involved – the tag cloud is part of the product on the results page.Patrons are not contributing, there is no editing done at this time.Advantages, it gives users a different way to browse.Baltimore County Public Library

AquaBrowser at Baltimore County PL

BCPL screen 2

Other ProductsBiblioCommonsSocial discovering system for libraries that replaces all user-facing OPAC functionality.Allows faceted searching.Oakville Public Library

BiblioCommons at Oakville Public Library

Oakville PL screen 2

What’s Next?ZoomClouds a service that will create a tag cloud from an RSS feed. There are websites out there that "cluster" results. Clusty, Yahoo TagExplorerSecond generation tag clouds.Tag Cloud services.More Tag Clouds, More Complexity!Web 3.0

Questions and Comments

BibliographyBates, M.E. (2006). Tag-you’re it! Online, 30(1), 64-65.Gelernter, J. (2007). A quantitative analysis of collaborative tags: Evaluation for information retrieval—a preliminary study. International Conference on Collaborative Computing: Networking, Applications and Worksharing, 2007. CollaborateCom 2007. 12-15 Nov. 2007, 376 - 381.Kipp, M.E.I. (2008). Searching with tags: Do tags help users find things? Paper presented at 10th International Conference of the International Society for Knowledge Organization, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Retrieved May 1, 2009, from http://www.scribd.com/doc/7857492/Searching-with-Tags-Do-Tags-Help-Users-Find-ThingsLund, W. & Washburn, A. (2008). Patrons cataloging? The role and quality of patron tagging in item description. Pushing the edge: explore, extend, engage: proceedings of the Fourteenth National Conference of the Association of College and Research Libraries, March 12-15, 2009, Seattle, WashingtonMorrison, P.J. (2008). Tagging and searching: search retrieval effectiveness of folksonomies on the World Wide Web. Information Processing and Management, 44, 1562-1579.Morrison, P.J. (2007). Why are they tagging and why do we want them to? Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 34(1), 12-15. Rethlefsen, M.L. (2007). Chief thingamabrarian. Library Journal, 132(1), 40-42.Sinclair J. & Cardew-Hall, M. (2008). The folksonomy tag cloud: when is it useful? Journal of Information Studies, 34(1), 15-29. Spiteri, L.F. (2008). Folksonomies, the Web and search engines. Webology, 5(3). Retrieved May 1, 2009, from http://www.webology.ir/2008/v5n3/editorial17.htmlSpiteri, L.F. (2007). Structure and form of folksonomy tags: the road to the public library catalogue. Information Technology and Libraries, 26(3), 13-25.