Tag That!

In this subject area, we're going to cover social tagging, folksonomies, and user-generated cataloging.

For some background on tagging, read The Hive Mind: Folksonomies and User-based Tagging.

Tagging with Flickr

Jennie's fugly but functional Flickr handout

Watson Library on Flickr

Flickr ideas, toys

Tagging bookmarks on del.icio.us

Tagging Books on LibraryThing

First of All: Why Tagging?

According to Tim Spalding, creator/founder of LibraryThing:

(short answer) Tags are a simple way to categorize books according to how you think of them, not how some library official does. Anything can be a tag—just type words or phrases, separated by commas. Thus one person will tag the The DaVinci Code "novels" while another tags it "trashy, religion, mary," and still another only "summer home." Tags are particularly useful for searching and sorting—-when you need a list of all your novels or all the books at the summer home.

(long answer) Once you have a hundred books or so, you need some way to organize them. Library subject classifications, including that of the Library of Congress, are one solution. For most personal libraries, however, they aren't much use. "Tags," informal, personal markers used on blogs and sites like Flickr and Del.icio.us, provide a better model.

Here are two examples from my (Tim's) experience:

The LC catalogs Bean's Aegean Turkey, a guide to the archaeological sites of Turkey's western coast, under the single subject, "Ionia." For me, however, the book is about turkey and archaeology, tags I've applied to dozens of books, including Bean's other archaeological guides.

The LC thinks Bernadette Brooten's Love Between Women: Early Christian Responses to Female Homoeroticism is about six different things, including the mouthful "Bible. N.T. Romans I, 18-32 — Criticism, interpretation, etc. — History — Early church, ca. 30-600." I get by with the tags early church, and homosexuality. To these I added the tag divination. Although the book doesn't say much about divination, its comments on the topic were actually the reason I picked it up.

Tags can also mark "favorites" or "books to read." I've used the tag ben's to mark books I should return to my friend Ben. (That I included them in my catalog is, however, a bad sign for that!)

In addition to being a way to organize your own collection, social content sites like Flickr and Del.icio.us have shown that large numbers of different users' tags produce categorization structures ("folksonomies") that can surpass traditional taxonomies. (See Clay Shirky's talk Ontology is Overrated: Categories, Links and Tags" for a stimulating discussion.) As LibraryThing grows, I expect to use this data in new and interesting ways.

Now Then: What Is LibraryThing?

LibraryThing (which is still in beta) has been described as “MySpace for bibliophiles” and “crack for book-lovers.” Both are equally true. : ) LT is a database with many community features; it allows you to catalog and tag your books (its template is not set up to accommodate things like DVDs, CDs, LPs, or videos, and there is no wishlisting function yet), and to see who else has the books that you do.

LT allows users to connect with others who have similar interests. These connections can be made not only via book titles and profile-page information, but also via tagging. Clear, detailed tagging on LT can allow researchers/scholars to see their resources at a glance, and facilitate the quick retrieval of sets of data; it may even allow them to create bibliographies with the click of a tag. An early investment in tagging while adding books will pay huge dividends. Community building via groups, shared books, “similarly tagged” items, information found on users’ Fun Statistics pages, book recommendations, etc.--all these things can bring users and their varied collections together in new and edifying ways.

Creating an account--and here, “account” refers to an individual’s account, not to an institutional account--is incredibly easy. (So easy, in fact, that a typo during login in can create a new account, so beware! This is at least part of the reason that LT claims nearly 120,000 members as of mid-December 2006.) Create and type in a login and password; if the login isn’t already spoken for, your account will open immediately, and can be either public (meaning that other users can browse your catalog, see your Fun Statistics, etc.) or private (meaning that only your chosen ID and the size of your catalog will be visible to other users). The first 200 entries are free; after that, the fee is either $10 per year, or $25 for life. (The fee structure differs for institutional accounts. Note that there are a number of small institutions that use LT as an OPAC.)

Each LT member has a profile page. This is a place where members can post pictures and describe themselves and their libraries, and where other members can leave public or private messages. (Exchanges can become quite lengthy; fortunately, there’s a message archiving feature.) LT also has almost 1,200 user groups, each of which has its own forum and list of most commonly shared books, and features a blog written by the creators/maintainers of the site that offers news, announcements, reports, and musings. Oddly enough, the largest user group, with more than 1,300 members, is Librarians Who LibraryThing. Recommended Site Improvements, however, is the most active board.

Other Links

Steve: The Art Museum Social Tagging Project

NEXT GENERATION LIBRARY CATALOGS

Some Defining Aspects of Next-Generation Catalogs:

• Improved relevance-ranking algorithms

• Faceted or clustered results (derived from existing metadata - the bib and item

record) allowing patrons to refine their query

• Faceted browsing

• Visual mapping of results

• Ability to create lateral or “sideways” associations between results (expansion

of searches, suggestions, etc)

• Provides spell-check and stemming; “Did you mean?”

• Use of various Web 2.0 tools, such as RSS-Feeds or Mash-ups

• A redesigned search front-end that is user-intuitive and more akin to Web

searching, e.g. Clusty search engine

• Easier navigation through search results

• Improved speed (like that of search engines)

Purpose of Next-Generation Catalogs:

• To reduce the level of confusion users face when looking at conventional Web OPACs

• To expose library data in a completely new way. Findability.

• To offer suggestions for patrons in formulating a search and to help them discover new information

• To view the OPAC as a discovery tool, rather than simply a tool for known-item searching or exact queries

• To encourage exploration & serendipity (Tim Spalding, creator of Library Thing).

• To allow patrons to truly interact with the OPAC through tagging, submitting comments, and a customizable patron online OPAC space

• To create communities

• To have fun!

Examples of Next-Generation OPACs:

North Carolina State University (NCSU) Libraries Catalog

• Have implemented Endeca’s Guided Navigation engine.

• The software was developed for commercial websites such as Barnes and Noble, and Home Depot.

• Click on “Endeca Project at NCSU Libraries” for more information, including good PPT presentations.

University of Rochester Libraries Catalog

AcquaBrowser Library 2.0

• A library catalog search tool from MediaLab Solutions to create next-generation catalogs.

• AquaBrowser adds a “word cloud” component to searching the OPAC. The word cloud includes the most relevant associations, foreign language translations, spelling variations, and synonyms.

• It can also connect to other resources (metasearch)

• Is RSS enabled

• Its search front-end finds items using associations, context, and spelling alternatives automatically generated from your library's catalog

• Provides the user with an interactive searching experience

The first libraries to implement AcquaBrowser:

• Amsterdam Public Library
• Arlington Public Library

EBSCOhost (Accessible remotely via The New York Public Library)

• Uses the Grokker search engine software.

Hennepin County Library Catalog, MN

Quintura

• A visual search engine interface.
• Searches across various engines including Google, Amazon, Ask, MSN Search, etc.
• Displays a tag cloud of your results with opportunities for you to refine your search using the tag cloud itself.
• As you manipulate the tag cloud your results change instantly.
• Flexible and intuitive. You can change your query at any step.
• With traditional OPACs, databases and conventional search engines, the user must take time to plan out their query. With Quintura, the search accuracy is not as important, as it allows you to continuously refine and alter the direction of your query.
• Easier and more dynamic management of search queries and their results.

PennTags

• PennTags is a social bookmarking tool created by the University of Pennsylvania Library or Penn Library.

• It allows the Penn State community to locate, organize, and share their favorite online resources. The Penn Community can collect and maintain URLs, links to journal articles, and records in Franklin, the online catalog and VCat, the online video catalog, and can then assign keywords (tags) to these links so that they can retrieve them in a way that makes sense to them. (source: http://tags.library.upenn.edu/help/ )

• A collaborative tool – it is a repository of the Penn Community research interests.

• Created by librarians

• Many of Penn Library’s resources, such as catalog records and article citations, can be added to a Penn Tags account simply by clicking the "Add to PennTags" icon from the resource itself.

• You can, of course, also tag Web sites on the WWW, the way you would through del.icio.us, using the “Post” link.

• You can also just post an idea on Penn Tags – no URL needed for that.

• You can create Projects. “A project is a collection of posts organized by an owner. By assigning posts to a project, you can collect a set of related links and descriptions under a single project URL. Use these projects to create annotated bibliographies.” (Source: http://tags.library.upenn.edu/help/using_projects )

What can we, as users outside of the PennTags community do with PennTags?

• Though we can’t post to PennTags we can still browse and search it for items of interest.

• You can use it as a discovery tool for new or lateral areas of research in the following ways:

• By following a tag. (You can bookmark a tag page. Penn community members can subscribe to an RSS feed for a particular tag.)
• By following an owner whose posts are relevant to your research. (You can bookmark an owner's page. Penn community members can subscribe to an RSS feed for the owner's page.)
• By following related tags

• You can consult PennTags tagging tips, most of which can be applied to all social bookmarking tools.

• Use it to convince IS&T to build a "MetTags" for the research staff of the Museum to create a similarly rich repository where curators can tag and share authoritative, specialized Websites, OPAC records, and scholarly articles.

Other Links:

WorldCat.org

Amazon.com

Clusty

Grokker