Library Thing

I like Library Thing! This is a really neat way to not only catalog and tag items that are part of your personal favorites, but to see other readers who are interested in the same types of items and how they have chosen to represent them in their own catalogs. This tool is similar in many ways to Shelfari, which I also subscribe to and am a big fan of, and it even seems to have some functionality associated with it that is not found in Shelfari. I am only just beginning to tap into the possibilities that Library Thing offers, but it seems that there are many ways that we might take advantage of it here in Libraryland. The Library Thing for Libraries feature, for example, would seem to be a great way to encourage customers to tag items in our catalog with their own info. The tag clouds that are generated from such input could potentially entice readers to try things that they might not if they are only looking at the cataloging that we generate. I plan to update this post once I have had a chance to play a bit more with the LT features, but till then I will just say that I am excited about this tool and am looking forward to using it more in the future.

Tagging with Flickr

Tagging is one of the features that sets Flickr apart from other photo sharing sites because it allows users to categorize the images in ways that make sense to them which, in theory, facilitates access and retrieval of those images. Of course tagging lacks the authority of a controlled vocabulary, but this is somewhat mitigated by the idea of a tag cloud which emphasizes frequently used tags over those that appear only sporadically. The result is a kind of democratized naming authority that may make use of terms and phrases not traditionally found in controlled vocabularies. Though Flickr is not the only means of collaborative photo sharing, it is certainly one of the simplest to use and has the added benefit of being one of the more popular sites. This means that more images are available to use and tag, and this is undoubtedly better for all users.

del.icio.us

Mmmm Mmmm, it really is delicious to use del.icio.us... I have been using this tool for quite some time to deal with a problem we face in the library system, namely that our favorites do not follow us from computer to computer. Del.icio.us solves this problem by creating a centralized place for me to store my Internet favorites so that I can pull them up on any computer I am logged onto, even away from work.

To tell the truth though, I had not really considered using del.icio.us to help me develop reading lists as is described in the web tutorial. This is an interesting feature that seems to be well suited towards those of us who need to keep up with current research on any particular topic. I was interested to hear the commentator speaking about the "magic middle" and about the need to be judicious when balancing the amount of content that can be realistically processed by any one person. I have similar feelings about the overwhelming amount of material that can be found online and also feel strongly that as information professionals we need to understand the best ways to sift through all of that info. Unfortunately, while tagging can lead you to content that you might not have reached through other means, there is also the quite real problem of false drops associated with synonymy, homonymy, and polysemy. I think that tagging has great potential to help us to better categorize and classify the vast amount of content available on the Internet, but I also think that the technology is still in its infancy and will have to undergo several growth spurts before it becomes as functional as it might be.