Playing Tag : Cataloging by the Crowd

Playing Tag: Cataloging by the Crowd
Elizabeth B. Thomsen
Member Services Manager
NOBLE: North of Boston Library Exchange
[email_address]

Traditional Taxonomy
"A Place for Everything, and Everything in Its Place"
Shelf-oriented: We have to decide the primary subject for a work so we can put it somewhere
There’s always a top-down hierarchy

Catalogers
We strive for logic, order and consistency
We provide access through authorized headings, controlled vocabulary and properly-constructed Library of Congress Subject Headings
Learn the system, and then apply it to all new material

Not So Simple
Many works are about more than one thing
Many subjects are “point up” to two or more higher subjects
Any decision is wrong for some of your users
We mitigate by adding links and pointers: See and See Also references, added entries, keyword searching, etc.

Wikipedia
Cataloging issues: establish a subject, redirect users from other terms
A simple redirect can take users from the unauthorized term to the one being used

Disambiguation Pages
Used when a subject has more than one meaning, including topics, geographic and personal names
Disambiguation pages have organized, annotated lists of all the different topics using the same term
Death Penalty

Two Paths to Disambiguation
Best Guess: If there is one article that is the most likely, Wikipedia will redirect the user to that article, but offer a link to the disambiguation page
User Must Choose: If there is no most likely article, the user must choose
Van Gogh | Mercury

Flickr
Photosharing site
Members tag their photos for their own convenience, but also to share them
Members may allow others to add tags
Groups use tags to create galleries
Many informal games and projects use tags

Flickr Tags
Most common tags: subjects and places
Other tags: medium, technical details, mood, color, geotagging
No synonym control
Informal rules tend to develop at all levels
Many members use multiple tags for the same concept: mass and massachusetts

How Useful are Flickr Tags
Aboutness more difficult to determine for photographs than text
Place names: tag all by place taken, or use only when the place is significant? Use hierarchy for place names?
What about tags like “me” and “cute”?

Flickr Examples
Flickr Current Tags – This is the main tags page, with the most popular tags from the past few days, plus all the most popular tags
My Tag Cloud – A member’s tag cloud
Boston | Boston Clusters | Cute Clusters

Flickr: Exploration
Flickr tags are useful for exploration and discovery
You can’t find everything, and probably wouldn’t want to
Tags have to be seen in context: groups, projects, contacts, clustering, interestingness, etc.
Flickr search is weak

del.icio.us
Social bookmarking site
Members save things here for their own use, share them and get recommendations
Members tag items for their own convenience, but also to share and find additional resources

del.icio.us Tag Features
Recommend: When you tag an item, the system presents recommended tags based on what other people have used, one click to add those. Tends to reduce synonym and spelling errors
Tag bundles: Members can create sets of related tags for their own use, adds a little hierarchy and organization

del.icio.us Examples
del.icio.us Main Page
Main Tag Display
Most Popular Tags
Display of tag: opensource

CiteULike
Academic social bookmarking site
Similar to del.icio.us, Furl and others
Members tag citations for articles, books, websites, etc.
Broad folksonomy : Many people tagging the same citations
CiteULike

LibraryThing
Social cataloging system for books
Members catalog their personal book collections; can also be used for small organization libraries, booklists, etc.
Imports cataloging from LC, Amazon and other sources
Members add tags to books in their collection

LibraryThing Tags
Members use tags for all sorts of things: subjects, genre, theme, location, gift notes, and designations like tbr (to be read)
Tags are used to organize the member’s collection, and for exploration of the site as a whole

LibraryThing Synonyms
LibraryThing allows premium members to link duplicate tags
Only affects the global view of the tags, not the actual tags
Only true duplicates should be linked
Linking is noted, and can be undone

LibraryThing Tag Examples
Tag Cloud
Author Cloud
Zeitgeist
Selected Tag: Complexity
Synonyms: Cooking
Tag Combining: Recipes

Future Directions
More recommended tags based on tags on the same or similar works; the users own tags, etc.
More spelling help: “Did you mean…”
More synonym control for searching, as in LibraryThing
Use of algorithms to assist in synonym control
Translation tools for tag searching
Private tags

Library Catalog Ideas
Use LibraryThing or something similar to allow library members to create and share their own tagged collections of titles.
Allow members to determine their own privacy settings for sharing lists. Include a real name option, like Amazon
Integrate social information into the catalog as an option

Library Ideas, Cont’d
Encourage vendors to incorporate social bookmarking features into their personalization options
Add tag searching as an option
Harvest information from the social software for collection development, as website content, etc.

Questions?
Elizabeth Thomsen
[email_address]

Playing Tag : Cataloging by the Crowd

by ethomsen on Apr 12, 2007

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