Learning 2.0: Tagging Two

The next lesson in our web 2.0 program at my library asked us to look at more specific uses of tagging. In particular, something class "folksonomy" which is really just a fancy name for tagging if you ask me.

One of the first things we were asked to do was look at a library using a new software called Encore. Encore is suppose to help make online library catalogs better and more user friendly. One of the elements of Encore is that when you search for a topic, to the right of your results you see a "tag cloud" on your topic. You can refine your search by looking at and clicking on a term in the cloud.

One of the first things I noticed is that Encore, at least in this particular library's catalog, definitely slows things down. It takes your results a few extra seconds to load and it takes that tag cloud even longer to load. That actually raises some concerns for me in terms of our off-campus and online learners using our resources from dial-up and slower connections. But, to move on since that's not the point of this assignment .....

I wonder about tag clouds and how useful they will be to a normal user. I particularly wonder if they'll even realize what they are.

Next we looked at del.icio.us. I absolutely do think tools like del.icio.us and netvouz (which I use) can be very helpful to people on a personal level in terms of keeping up with your web bookmarks. But I confess that I moved away from del.icio.us (with all of it's tagging ) to netvouz which allows me to create folders and put my bookmarks in folders. Del.icio.us just seemed to overwhelming for me and I never seemed to tag some things the same way. Maybe it's the librarian in me, but being able to put bookmarks in folders has been much more productive for me personally.

Learning 2.0: It's All about Tagging

I finally tackled the first tagging exercise in our library learning 2.0 program.

I am very likely "tagging" along with the husband later this year on a work trip to Europe. The plan is to catch a train or rent a car and go to Italy. So, of course, I decided to look at Italy in my searching.

When I searched "Italy" in Google, I retrieved 413,000,000 hits. Quite nicely, the Italian Tourism Board was the first result.

Then I moved over to eQuest, the Libraries' online catalog, and conducted a keyword search for Italy. I retrieved 3,211 results.

Then I moved over to searching for Italy as a subject in eQuest. As I remember from my "cataloging" class with Dr. Chan, LOC really lets you look at very specific aspects of a subject. Take a look:

And that's just the first screen!

It's interesting to me how much tagging and library classification systems have in common. People seem to have a strong need to classify and organize things. To place them into categories. And it's pretty clear to me that Web 2.0 tagging is just the newest application of this. I am hopeful and think that tagging might actually draw attention to libraries and library classification again.

Exercise 2:

Now that my professional life has slowed a little -- well, not really slowed, the work flow has just changed -- I have been able to look at this blog, Flickr, and several other Web 2.0 tools I use personally and professionally and see that I have not been very good at tagging! Sometimes it was hard and timeconsuming enough to just get the blog post, or the beach photos, or whatever up there without being expected to actually add tags too! No more! I am going to try to take a moment and add tags.