Del.icio.us

I stumbled onto del.icio.us a while back while looking for ways to create lists of titles and started linking from some articles in Bloglines that I wanted to read at my leisure. So it's been a pretty nice addition to my wired world. I'll still need to add my account to my blog page (later). Here's a link to it. (I tagged and added a couple of my own blogs just to see if anyone else would stumble across them. If anyone has, they don't seem to think they're worth linking to. Sigh)

But, since I'm a cataloger, I am a little bit threatened by the concept of tagging. One of my co-workers emailed me today and sent a link to the Danbury Public Library catalog, which uses tags, and asked what I thought of the concept. (She was excited about it.) I spent some time trying to undermine the concept. I did take the opportunity to link to my blog about LibraryThing, where I took a few cheap shots at the overlapping tags they used on the novel Ulysses and the problems I had with the lack of controlled headings for the Beatles.

But I did have to admit that the sheer number of tags that could be added to a record gives them a bit of an advantage. Not using a controlled vocabulary has the downside of not being able to narrow your search to a specific topic, but it seems to be very patron friendly and very usable. Comparing tagging to our "related-works" feature in our OPAC shows the difference-- when you click on a controlled heading you get all the items which use that exact heading. Good for when you want specificity (like when searching the author heading for "Beatles"). But you lose variant links that would catch different items where the term "Beatles" is a subject keyword rather than an author. Tags don't need to fit into one or the other pigeon-hole. That might be a huge benefit. Or not.

I also noted in my search of the Danbury catalog that some items didn't seem to get tags (none were on the sound recordings I looked at here, here, here or any under this performer), nor did a serial record with several editions of Fodor's Las Vegas. And there was one book about mushrooms that didn't even use the word mushrooms in any of the three tags used on it! So in this instance, a title or subject keyword search would be more effective than the current tags! And lest I forget, keyword searching capabilities currently available might be a better standard of comparison than subject headings. Where summaries and contents notes are available, they could prove to be the equal of tagging. We just don't have the time/resources to get this kind of information into all of our catalog records. But someday we might.

So it seems to me that tagging tends to work with newer, popular/high circulation items. My co-worker stated that she thought tagging would be a huge advantage when doing reader's advisory and that's probably true. I can also see where it might be useful in an area like music, where there are numerous sub-genres to categories like rock and techno and rap that won't be accessible if subject headings are broadly assigned but that could be added with tags.

But I do see some potential problems:

• getting tags on older works. Can we dump the tags from amazon.com or LibraryThing into our database? I'm guessing there's some way to do this, at least with current works. Starting from scratch and adding tags to our catalog would probably just emphasize our bias toward the new. But if tags already exist on amazon and LibraryThing, can't people find related works on those sites before they come to ours to place holds?
  
• monitoring the tags being added for improprieties. I'm sure we could come up with an automated way to prevent f-bombs but how about legitimate subject headings that might cause a reaction in some of our patrons?
• size limitations-- such as we're already facing when dealing with well-worn genre headings like Love stories, Detective and mystery stories, Feature films, Rock music, etc. can be an even bigger problem when searching an uncontrolled vocabulary. Try searching "literature" (100K+ hits) "war" (200K+ hits) or "history" (300K+ hits) on del.icio.us and you'll see what I mean. (And, no disrespect intended, but I don't think the Danbury Public Library is dealing with the same number of resources that the South Central Library System is sharing.)
• do we know how this would affect the system resources? Would a well used tag like one of those I mentioned in the previous bullet slow down the system significantly? And can we add tags without compromising the security of our database?
• do patrons who can't access our database from home add tags from terminals in the library? If some of our patrons don't have the same technology tools others among us take for granted are they being discriminated against somehow?
  

But I still think delicious (screw the punctuation) is a terrific way to save web pages. The tagging feature is also pretty great. Adding tags to our library catalog would be okay. But I don't think tags should replace our controlled headings. I do think they can complement our headings very nicely.

Now on to the gruntwork:

Assignments

1. Write a post in your blog about this week’s lesson and add some tags/labels to the post.
Done. (see above and below)
Some questions to consider: How can libraries harness the “massive amounts of participation” in tools like del.icio.us?
I think the tags on LibraryThing would be more appropriate if we're talking about adding the tags to our bib records. But I could see our reference staff showing patrons how to search delicious for tags that would link to web postings. But wouldn't this just be googling a smaller database?
Where else could libraries use tags?
Well, some of us use them on our blogs and I see them used on our internal websites and our book reviews.
Is the concept of tagging, with its uncontrolled vocabulary, unsettling to you?
Yes and no. I'm a cataloger and anything that undermines cataloging feels a little threatening. I think an uncontrolled vocabulary can co-exist with a controlled one, but this could be one more step along that slippery slope toward what they used to call "outsourcing."

2. Explore del.icio.us: Search for something you’re interested in.
I searched for the term/phrase graphic novels and got 1,647 hits.

Try clicking on different things in an entry to see what happens (What happens when you click on the title of the bookmarked page?
I got taken to the web site where the article lives. (Cool! No, really! I know it's supposed to happen, but it really is cool! Magic, even!)

How about the tags?
I clicked on the tag "manga" under one article and got a new list of articles using that term. (Again, totally cool!)

How about the “saved by xxx people” link?)
What you mean porn stars?! (ha!) (well you brought it up) That seems to take me to the list of notes (not tags) that the people who have tagged the article have written to themselves. (Still pretty cool, but it feels not as useful?)

Optional assignments:

1. Set up your own del.icio.us account and share its URL on your blog.
Yeah, got the account. I'll add the link later.
Del.icio.us has a How do I get started? page to get you started!

2. Choose someone’s account in del.icio.us who is linking to things you particularly like, and subscribe to their RSS feed in your Bloglines account. (HINT: Once you get to their del.icio.us page, look for the orange RSS icon at the bottom of the page!). If you can’t find someone’s account to subscribe to, try Libraryman.
I subscribed to Jessamyn West's del.icio.us account, just cuz I like her blogs. Don't know whether I'll stick with this new side of her though. Just wanted to finish the assignment.

Hey, I think I'm done with this assignment! Now that's cool!