“Folksonomies” – isn’t that just a fun word to say? But what is it all about? In Exploration 3 (Flickr), we touched upon the idea of tagging, the key component of creating a folksonomy. Folksonomies have no controlled vocabulary. Instead, users create keywords based on their own experience and interpretation of the item. We saw this in practice on the LibraryThing Exploration where the tag cloud ranged from your basic subject headings to very personal notations.
Thomas Vander Wal invented the term “folksonomy”. This is his definition and defense of the method taken from a blog post:
The value in this external tagging is derived from people using their own vocabulary and adding explicit meaning, which may come from inferred understanding of the information/object as well as. The people are not so much categorizing as providing a means to connect items and to provide their meaning in their own understanding.
There tremendous value that can be derived from this personal tagging when viewing it as a collective when you have the three needed data points in a folksonomy tool: 1) the person tagging; 2) the object being tagged as its own entity; and 3) the tag being used on that object. […] If you know the object (in del.icio.us it is the web page being tagged) and the tag you can find other individuals who use the same tag on that object, which may lead (if a little more investigation) to somebody who has the same interest and vocabulary as you do. That person can become a filter for items on which they use that tag. You then know an individual and a tag combination to follow. The key is knowing who and what specifically is being tagged.
This kind of organization plays a big part in social bookmarking sites, such as the popular del.icio.us. You know all those fabulous websites you found while doing a random search at the desk? How about that Friday night you ended up following links around the web until you found the best website for storytime crafts? You could just bookmark them on the computer, maybe email yourself the URL.
With a site like del.icio.us, you can bookmark the page to your own personal site. Then that site can be accessed from anywhere. It is the same idea as web-based email – instead of having to be at home on your personal computer, or logged in to a staff computer, you can save your favorite sites to a webpage and have access to them any time, any place, any where.
For example, let’s say you work Sundays at the Crofton library. You’re helping a student with a project and you remember a co-worker assisting a student on a similar project earlier that week and finding some wonderful websites that helped answer the questions. If your branch created a del.icio.us page for staff use, you could quickly access that page from the Crofton library. The staff member might have tagged the webpage with “Grade 9, Feb Homework, Elizabethan England” and you can quickly jump to a list of bookmarked pages.
That’s just one idea. What are some other uses for web-based bookmarking sites? How do tags help keep these sites organized (or do they)? How could libraries and librarians use these sites with staff? Could they use them with patrons?
Take a look at some of these other del.icio.us pages:
YALSA’s Favorites include ideas for teen programming and services
Lansing Public Library uses del.icio.us to keep track of items
San Mateo Library tags their favorites with subjects and dewey numbers.
A librarian blogger is working hard to maintain a list of libraries using del.icio.us. Check out the post and click around.
Time to blog! Log into your Exploration blog and post your thoughts on social bookmarking sites, tagging, and folksonomies. Share any ideas you had for using del.icio.us in your library.
1 comment:
velly interesting!
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