defragging taxonomies and folksonomies Karen G. Schneider College Center for Library Automation Tallahassee, Florida

library use: and/and/and Circ, Holdings, FTE 0 200,000 400,000 600,000 800,000 1,000,000 1,200,000 1,400,000 1,600,000 Circulation 1,243,447 1,330,906 1,380,000 1,080,000 1,098,983 1,293,864 1,451,417 1,400,000 1,388,342 1,301,582 Holdings 968,268 998,446 1,029,515 1,086,402 1,116,642 1,146,127 1,210,127 FTEs 238,348 236,256 234,962 235,527 244,558 267,486 285,128 297,795 294,818 287,714 FY9697 FY9798 FY9899 FY9900 FY0001 FY0102 FY0203 FY0304 FY0405 FY0506

a brief history of library automation

“ disconnected data silos with non-usable content”

worldcat : 1 billion records

learning from taxonomies

classic problems in authority control spell-check stemming synonyms phrases anachronisms

disambiguation

Definition

expertise can be efficient

topic depth (faceting/subdivisions)

lessons from folksonomies

don’t scare off your workforce

in the short term, satisficing trumps perfecting

In 2006, 400 catalogers at the Library of Congress cataloged 350,000 “volumes.” That’s 1,400 records per workday, or 3.5 records per person, per day.

Tagging is about (re)discovery and (re)use, not (just) description

Tagging is about building data, not records

folksonomies grow good metadata

90% of Flickr content falls into 6 different types of facets: place (40% of tags), events , dates, people, things/animals, color

some basic rules about cataloging appear instinctive

Useless critiques of folksonomies

problems common to taxonomies and folksonomies tags * time = crud scalability (onesies vs. noise)

uber-folksonomies

wikipedia

Librarything for Libraries librarything ltfl

Librarians’ Internet Index lii.org

librarians’ delicious collections Canadian Assumption College California Law

incentivizing uberization: handprints and mirrors

AIM/email: [email_address] twitter: kgs facebook: K.G. Schneider doppler: freerangelibrarian blog: freerangelibrarian.com WorldCat Identity: http://orlabs.oclc.org/Identities/lccn-n95-110807