Spiteri AN2006

The Use of Collaborative Tagging in Public Library Catalogues: 

The Use of Collaborative Tagging in Public Library Catalogues Louise Spiteri School of Information Management Dalhousie University

Client-centred library catalogues: 

Client-centred library catalogues In recent years, significant developments have occurred in the creation of library portals that enable some degree of client personalization. A portal, as compared to a web site, gateway or structure, leads clients to a set of information and enables them to select and include chosen links on that personal page A library portal is user-centric: Elements that might appear on portals include access to various kinds of data, a search box, links, calendars or schedules, e-mail or address books, discussion groups or chat, and support for collaborative activities.

Limitations of current library systems: 

Limitations of current library systems Although many library management systems allow clients to personalize information to meet their needs, client participation is still limited to following types of activities: Account information: who I am, what I’ve borrowed, what I’ve placed on hold Search features: e.g., always provide me with the advanced search feature Lists: I can store citations within lists that I label myself. I cannot annotate the individual citations, nor share my lists with other clients.

Desired features of library systems: 

Desired features of library systems Library systems could benefit from even more user-driven customization and should allow people to create their own organizations of information, not just the one provided by library staff. In their discussion of ideal features for library portals, Dempsey (2003) and Michalko (2004) recommend that clients be allowed to annotate resources of interest and to share these annotations with other clients with similar interests.

Traditional indexing: 

Traditional indexing Library catalogues normally index the subject of their contents via a prescribed list of subject headings, the most common of which is the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) Such indexing is performed by professional cataloguing librarians. In contrast, collaborative tagging allows anyone to freely attach keywords or tags to content

Collaborative Tagging and Folksonomies: Definitions: 

Collaborative Tagging and Folksonomies: Definitions “Collaborative tagging” is used to describe the process by which people create and share their metadata tags “Folksonomies” refers to the actual output, or the tags themselves.

What are folksonomies?: 

What are folksonomies? Folksonomies (known also as “social classifications”) are user created metadata. They are a grassroots community classification of digital assets. The term “folksonomy” was created by Thomas Vander Val and represents a merging of the terms “folk” and “taxonomy.” One form of explicit user created metadata was popularized in the late 1990s with link-focused websites called weblogs.

Where are folksonomies found?: 

Where are folksonomies found? Folksonomies are found in social bookmarks managers such as Del.icio.us (http://del.icio.us/) and Furl (http://www.furl.net/), which allow users to: Add bookmarks of sites they like to their personal collections of links Organize and categorize these sites by adding their own terms, or tags Share this collection with other people with the same interests. The tags are used to collocate bookmarks: (a) within a user’s collection; and (b) across the entire system, e.g., the page http://del.icio.us/tag/blogging will show all bookmarks that are tagged with “blogging” by any user.

Inter-term relationships: 

Inter-term relationships There are no clearly defined relations between and among the terms in the vocabulary, unlike formal taxonomies and classification schemes, where there are multiple kinds of explicit relationships (e.g., broader, narrower, and related terms) between and among terms. Folksonomies are simply the set of terms that a group of users tagged content with; they are not a predetermined set of classification terms or labels.

Popular folksonomy sites: 

Popular folksonomy sites Del.icio.us (http://del.icio.us) Flickr (http://www.flickr.com) Frassle (http://www.frassle.org) Furl (http://www.furl.net) Simpy (http://www.simpy.com) Spurl (http://www.spurl.com) Technorati (http://www.technorati.com)

Adding tags to bookmarks: 

Adding tags to bookmarks

Examples of my bookmarks: 

Examples of my bookmarks

Folksonomies and user vocabulary: 

Folksonomies and user vocabulary In information retrieval systems (IRS), the vocabulary used to organize content may be based upon the choices of the authors of the materials, the designer of the IRS, or the designer of the controlled vocabulary in place. Folksonomies reflect users’ choices in diction, terminology, and precision. Folksonomies can adapt very quickly to changes in user needs and vocabulary, and adding new terms to a folksonomy incurs virtually no cost for either the user or the system.

Folksonomies and online communities: 

Folksonomies and online communities Folksonomies create a sense of community amongst their users. Most social bookmark managers will recommend new links and other members’ folders or sites that are strongly related to an individual member by analyzing his or her linking pattern. As soon as users assign a tag to an item, they can see the cluster of items carrying the same tag. This feedback loop leads to a form of asymmetrical communication between users through metadata. The users of a system negotiate the meaning of the terms in the folksonomy.

Contributions of collaborative tagging to public library catalogues: 

Contributions of collaborative tagging to public library catalogues Organisation of personal information space: Allow clients to find items of interest (items in the library catalogue, citations from external databases, external web pages, etc.) and store, maintain, and organise them in the catalogue using their own tags.

Contributions of collaborative tagging to public library catalogues: 

Contributions of collaborative tagging to public library catalogues Supplement existing controlled vocabularies: Allow searchers to supplement the existing controlled vocabulary in the catalogue (normally Library of Congress Subject Headings, or LCSH) with their own tags in their personal information space. LCSH headings are not always be intuitive to users, e.g., LCSH uses the heading “Cookery”, a term that most people would probably be unlikely to choose over the more intuitive “Cooking”. LCSH terms are not always current enough to serve client needs, e.g., the term RSS does not exist as a term in LCSH (one is directed to use Remote Sensing Society) for the concept “Really Simple Syndication.”

Contributions of collaborative tagging to public library catalogues: 

Contributions of collaborative tagging to public library catalogues Create online communities of interests: Collaborative tagging could be used to foster online communities of interest among catalogue users. Clients can create either private (for their own eyes only) or public tags (with corresponding stored items). The public tags can be viewed by other catalogue users with similar interests; this use of collaborative tagging could facilitate the sharing and exchange of information found in library resources, external web links, etc.

Research goals: 

Research goals The purpose of this project is to examine the application of collaborative tagging to organizing personal information space, and to supplementing LCSH The relationship of collaborative tagging to the creation of online communities of interest will be addressed in future studies. In order to understand more fully the potential applications of collaborative tagging to public library catalogues, it is important to examine how folksonomies are structured and used, and the extent to which they reflect client needs not found in existing controlled vocabularies

Research questions: 

Research questions How are folksonomy tags structured? To what extent does this structure reflect and differ from the norms used in the construction of subject headings and descriptors in controlled vocabularies such as LCSH? What are the strengths and weaknesses of folksonomies (e.g., reflect user need, ambiguous headings, redundant headings, etc.)? To what extent do LCSH headings reflect user-derived folksonomies? How much overlap exists between LCSH headings and popular tags? How well do LCSH headings mirror user-derived tags for similar concepts?

Data collection: 

Data collection The folksonomies of three popular bookmark manager sites will be examined: Del.icio.us (http://del.icio.us), Furl (http://www.furl.net), and Technorati (http://www.technorati.com). These sites were chosen because they provide daily logs of the most popular tags that have been assigned by their members on a given day. Daily tag logs from each of the three sites will be acquired over a one-month period; on average the daily logs consist of 30 tags.

Data analysis: 

Data analysis (a) Analysis of the structure of the tags in accordance with the NISO Z39.19-2005 standards for thesaurus construction, e.g.: Use of singular/plural forms (e.g., weblog vs. weblogs) Use of adjectival, noun, or verbal forms (e.g., weblogs vs. blogging) Use of single/compound terms (e.g. weblogs vs. web logs) Spelling variations (e.g., catalogs vs. catalogues) Acronyms/full terms (e.g., RSS vs. Really Simply Syndication) Homographs (e.g., port (wine) vs. port (harbour) Punctuation use (e.g., Web/Tech) Ambiguous headings (e.g., ALA could refer to American Library Association or American Lung Association) Incidence of synonymy (e.g., films/movies) Incidence of redundancy (e.g., weblogs and blogs both refer to the same concept)

Data analysis: 

Data analysis (b) Formation of “term clusters” to determine the main conceptual groupings of the folksonomies: e.g., the terms “films”, “movies,” “cinema” all cluster around one concept. Similarly, variant spellings of a term cluster around one concept, as do verbal, adjectival, or noun forms of terms (e.g., weblogs, blogs, and blogging). The results obtained in (a) and (b) will be compared across the three bookmark manager sites to determine patterns in the way tags are structured, and conceptual areas of commonality across the three sites.

Data analysis: 

Data analysis (c) A comparison of the folksonomy tags acquired in (a) to LCSH headings. The following procedures will be followed: A list of unique tags derived from the three sites will be compiled (e.g., the term “weblogs” is likely to appear in all three sites). The LSCH subject authority files (http://authorities.loc.gov) will be consulted in order to find the closest matching equivalents to the list of unique tags derived in (c) above. Notice will be made of exact matches, equivalent terms used to express the same concept, and the absence of equivalent LCSH headings.

Conclusions: 

Conclusions Collaborative tagging provides the possibility of balancing controlled vocabularies such as LCSH with user-derived vocabularies. LCSH should still be used as a searching tool in the catalogues to enable precision and quality, but why not allow clients some flexibility in using their own tags, in conjunction with LCSH headings that they may like, to organize their own personal information spaces? If, for example, clients decided to use the LCSH heading “Motion Pictures” to categorize items of interest, they could use their own tags to sub-divide this category if no parallel terms existed in LCSH. “Cult movies”, for example, is a very popular and well-known film genre, but it does not exist in LCSH, and would make a good narrower term for “Motion Pictures”

Conclusions: 

Conclusions Collaborative tagging could be used also to create online communities that share their interests via the public library catalogue. Clients with a shared interest in cult films, for example, could access each others’ relevant tags, and hence any resources that have been bookmarked under these tags. Librarians could use the information found under the public tags to help them create reading lists. Collaborative tagging could thus help create more client-directed library portals.

Other areas to explore: 

Other areas to explore The cognitive and behavioural aspects of folksonomy use: What is the tagging behaviour of people who use folksonomies? Why do people choose the tags they use; what motivates them to modify these tags; how often do they modify them? How are folksonomies used communally? How do folksonomies foster consensus in the use of tags? How does the community affect which tags are used and how?

Acknowledgments: 

Acknowledgments This research is funded by the OCLC/ALISE Library & Information Science Research Grant Program (LISRGP)