Playing tag
Tim at the Librarything recently posted the results of study he did on tagging. As I read this it made me think about some of the points in Tim O'Reilly's article What is Web2.0 (I highly reccomend the O'Reilly article btw).
1. If tagging is ultimately going to be useful then it needs to improve search. We need to find a way to factor user generated content into our search algorithms, hopefully in a way that the user will come to understand that tagging or other content creation activities will improve their ability to find what they are looking for.
2. In order to reap web2.0 benefits (the benefits of operating within a network) we need to find ways to enhance data that go beyond asking users to consciously tag or categorize data for us. In other words we need to be documenting what users are doing and use what we learn to improve our data. Probably the paradigmatic instance of this is Amazon's users who bought x also bought a, b, c etc.
So thinking about this in the library world... I wonder what if circulation stats were figured into keyword (and heading searches) so that books that circulated more often were more likely to float to the top of results lists. What about tracking what books are put on reserve? Or what books do we own multiple copies of, or hold request and so on. Could we assume that a book that has been on reserve is more likely to interest a student than one that hasn't? Also could we think about generating tags from things that are already happening with books, for instance statistical codes we apply, funds, reserve lists, ref. works folders...
Finally I think Tim Spalding (Librarything) has a good point that tags are only (or especially) useful in large numbers. Thus a consortia catalog is much more likely to generate helpful tagging then any single institution. O'Reilly argues that true web2.0 applications perform better the more people use them. All this makes me think that the future of "SOPACs" lies with big conglomerate catalogs like IShare, WorldCat, or Librarything.
1. If tagging is ultimately going to be useful then it needs to improve search. We need to find a way to factor user generated content into our search algorithms, hopefully in a way that the user will come to understand that tagging or other content creation activities will improve their ability to find what they are looking for.
2. In order to reap web2.0 benefits (the benefits of operating within a network) we need to find ways to enhance data that go beyond asking users to consciously tag or categorize data for us. In other words we need to be documenting what users are doing and use what we learn to improve our data. Probably the paradigmatic instance of this is Amazon's users who bought x also bought a, b, c etc.
So thinking about this in the library world... I wonder what if circulation stats were figured into keyword (and heading searches) so that books that circulated more often were more likely to float to the top of results lists. What about tracking what books are put on reserve? Or what books do we own multiple copies of, or hold request and so on. Could we assume that a book that has been on reserve is more likely to interest a student than one that hasn't? Also could we think about generating tags from things that are already happening with books, for instance statistical codes we apply, funds, reserve lists, ref. works folders...
Finally I think Tim Spalding (Librarything) has a good point that tags are only (or especially) useful in large numbers. Thus a consortia catalog is much more likely to generate helpful tagging then any single institution. O'Reilly argues that true web2.0 applications perform better the more people use them. All this makes me think that the future of "SOPACs" lies with big conglomerate catalogs like IShare, WorldCat, or Librarything.
posted by Matt @ 12:29 PM
3 comments
