1. OPAL Conference, August 20081 Social Tagging, Folksonomies & Controlled Vocabularies Inviting New Access Systems to our Academic Table Margaret Maurer Associate Professor Head, Catalog & Metadata Kent State University Libraries and Media Services

2. OPAL Conference, August 20082 What are tags? Keywords or terms associated with or assigned to a piece of information They enable keyword-based classification and search of information

3. OPAL Conference, August 20083 Basic Model for Tagging Systems USER TAGS RESOURCES

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8. 8 Don’t confuse tags with keywords or full-text searching Keywords are behind the scenes, tags are often visibly aggregated for use and browsing Keywords can not be hyper-linked Keywords imply searching, tags imply linking Full-text searching is passive, tagging is active It’s more about connecting items rather than categorizing them.

9. OPAL Conference, August 20089 Tags can be… Descriptions of the subject matter Where the item is located The intended use of the item Individual (gift from mom) Different people have different tagging patterns Tagging systems encourage differences

10. OPAL Conference, August 200810 Tags are Non-hierarchical A way to create links between items by the creation of sets of objects A means of connecting with others interested in the same things

11. OPAL Conference, August 200811 Tagging Systems Define Who can tag What can be tagged What kinds of tags can be used Tagging systems may result in the creation of a “folksonomy”

12. OPAL Conference, August 200812 Types of Tagging Systems Managing personal information Social bookmarking Collecting and sharing digital objects Improving the e-commerce experience

13. OPAL Conference, August 200813 Why is tagging so popular? It is easy and enjoyable It has a low cognitive cost It is quick to do It provides self and social feedback immediately

14. OPAL Conference, August 200814 Putting the social in tagging Tags allow for social interaction because when we navigate by tags we are directly connecting with others People tag for their own benefit

15. OPAL Conference, August 200815 Tags, and therefore social tags are Dynamic categorization systems Often created on-the-fly Chosen as relevant to the user – not to the creator, cataloger or researcher A social activity (more on this later) Hopefully one small step toward a more interactive and responsive library system

16. OPAL Conference, August 200816 What is a folksonomy? Folksonomy refers to an “emergent, grassroots taxonomy” An aggregate collections of tags A bottom-up categorical structure development An emergent thesaurus A term coined by Thomas Vander Wal

17. OPAL Conference, August 200817 Why do folksonomies work? The searcher defines the access, but The aggregation of the terms has public value It’s a typically messy democratic approach

18. OPAL Conference, August 200818 What makes folksonomies popular? Their dynamic nature works well with dynamic resources They’re personal They lower barriers to cooperation

19. OPAL Conference, August 200819 Tagging and the consequent folksonomies work best when It’s easy to do It’s not commercial in nature Taggers have ownership Taggers are more likely to tag their own stuff than they are your stuff It has been shown to work well on the Web

20. OPAL Conference, August 200820 The unexpected development: terminological consensus Collective action yields common terms Stabilization may be caused by imitation and shared knowledge The wisdom of the crowd

21. OPAL Conference, August 200821 Is your tagging influenced by my tagging? Of course it is! People are beginning tag in ways that make it easier for others to fine like stuff Shared meaning consequently evolves for tags Most used tags become most visible

22. OPAL Conference, August 200822 Strengths of folksonomies Cost-effective way to organize Internet Social benefits It’s inclusive For many environments, they work well

23. OPAL Conference, August 200823 Collocation issues They do not yield the level of clarity that controlled vocabularies do Term ambiguity – words with multiple meanings No synonym control

24. OPAL Conference, August 200824 Issues with specificity Variable specificity for related terms Broadness of terms impacts precision – terms are often imprecise Mixed perspectives

25. OPAL Conference, August 200825 Issues with structure Singular and plural forms create redundant headings No guidelines for the use of compound headings, punctuation, word order No scope notes No cross references

26. OPAL Conference, August 200826 Issues with accuracy Collective ‘wisdom’ of the tagging community How does wrong information impact retrieval Conflicting cultural norms Sometimes authority counts

27. OPAL Conference, August 200827 “Spagging” and other problems Opening doors to opinion tags Tagging wars “Spagging”  Spam tagging

28. OPAL Conference, August 200828 Tidying up the tags…? Lists of tagging norms have been developed Are there programmatic solutions? Users know they are looking at tags By tidying, do we destroy the essence of why this works? Do we realistically have the resources?

29. OPAL Conference, August 200829 Recommendations Don’t assume that one size fits all Retain controlled vocabularies in the catalog Explore ways to use controlled vocabularies to help organize the internet by re-purposing controlled vocabularies that already exist Invite Folksonomies to the party in the catalog to gain their benefits Explore ways to combine the two systems

30. OPAL Conference, August 200830 Recommendations When you invite folksonomies into the catalog, do so strategically, and carefully Don’t put terms in the same index as controlled vocabularies Find ways to associate terms applied across editions of works Need for mediation, or at least observation The crowd is not necessarily the best arbiter of specific terminology

31. OPAL Conference, August 200831 Recommendations Always remember why people tag People tag things because they want to find them, not because they want others to find them Be aware that this will impact the quality of the terms, and their frequency

32. OPAL Conference, August 200832 Recommendations Controlled vocabularies could be better utilized than they currently are Subject structures are underutilized in the ILS Controlled vocabularies that exist are not being exported to the Web Well-connected terms foster discovery – let’s connect them. Index those cross references where available

33. OPAL Conference, August 200833 Questions? Margaret Maurer mbmaurer@kent.edu