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.

The RA Wiki

I have mixed feelings about this wiki for several reasons. On the one hand, this is a great space for staff to share a book/author they think is worthwhile, but the fact that everyone can not only add their own entry, but alter others entries is problematic. It may turn out to work fine in this setting where all of the contributors are fairly homogeneous and well meaning, but in circumstances where that is not the case I think the lack of registration could present problems. The interface here was pretty simple, but a little tricky as well in spots, and it took me a while to figure out that you could fix the editing bar in place while scrolling far down the page. Other than that it worked pretty well and the changes were easy to make (after the edit bar thing).

Tagging was not really useful in this instance, since there is no way to really tag each entry without just putting it at the end as many people did. (Tags: Sci-Fi, Space, etc.) Because you can see most of the stuff that would be in the tags in the main entry it seemed kind of pointless. By the same token, if you were to add all the collected tags from each entry to the entire page, you would have a huge mish mash of tags that would perhaps aid searching, but would create many false hits as well.