Some great discussion on a number of points! My thoughts on tagging.
- I think tagging could be a very useful feature - in the right
community context, since it is all about community. In order to see
how this could work I think we need to stop thinking of the entire bib
database as the foundation (too blunt an instrument) and think more of
how the users do and could use it. We also need to make sure we
provide the additional functions (like subscribe to a tag, eMail new
tagged items, etc.) that make tagging useful to the community.
- For example, tagging in the public library context could become a
community generated readers advisory. Tag records with author names
that you felt were similar. Rather than buying the big NY-centric (or
wherever) readers services build a local one that reflects local
contexts.
- Get your bookclubs and other groups to tag in their context, whether
it be support books for the book under discussion or the local history
society tagging so they can build help guides and paths for their
community of interest.
- In a University context tag items with a course ID so fellow
students can see what other students found useful. Better yet, find a
prof or 2 who will give marks for this community, patricipatory
effort. The tags will come soon after that.
This also gets at another feature I would like to see, which is
allowing users to attach their bibliographies to the records in the
OPAC. Tagging needn't be about one word - more on this idea in another
message...
Mark
On 7-Oct-08, at 7:57 PM, Jonathan Rochkind <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I think the only point at which a user would actually be motivated
to tag something is when they are organizing citations for their own
use, one way or another. When they are saving a citation to their
own 'book bag', or to making a request (saving it to their request
list), etc. By and large, people don't tag just for the enjoyment
of tagging, or to provide useful query words for others. They tag to
achieve some personal goal. "personal value precedes network value”.
(http://bokardo.com/archives/the-delicious-lesson/)
So on the one hand, I'm skeptical in general of how much our users
are going to use tags. I think most experiments so far with tagging
in library catalogs have not achieved much use from users. Perhaps
it should quite rightly not be a priority for the Evergreen
development. Are users asking for it? Would users use it? (Sometimes
users end up using something they didn't even know to ask for,
certainly---when it fills a need they have, but they didn't realize
to ask for it to fill that need. What need does tagging fill for the
user?)
To make tagging useful, I think you need two things. First you need
to identify and fill the "personal value". How will the ability to
tag help the individual person doing the tagging? If you've got a
'bookbag' feature that is useful enough that your users are actually
using it, and they are storing so much stuff in it that they might
have trouble keeping track of what they're stored there, you might
be already there. (How much use of the bookbag and what sorts of use
is Georgia seeing?). But if that's going to be the personal value
that motivates tagging, you've got to let the user apply the tags at
the moment of personal use. You can't say, oh, you can tag, but only
after you've checked out the book. Nobody's going to go back to the
catalog to find a book they already checked out to add a tag. Users
find books in the catalog _before_ they've checked them out!
Then once you've got the personal value there, if you want to
achieve the network value, that's when aggregating tags accross
multiple institutions matters. But if users have got no motivation
to tag, no personal value, they aren't going to do it in the first
place. In that case, those worried about tags 'polluting' the
catalog don't need to, because there aren't going to be any tags
there anyway.
Jonathan
On Oct 7, 2008, at 11:46 AM, Deanna Frazee wrote:
This prompts another thought. If I eventually am persuaded to allow
tagging (and if I persuade my staff that it is worthwhile), can we
have
tagging only by someone who has actually checked out the item? One
of
the problems with Amazon, for example, is that anyone can go in and
tag
an item. Granted, many people will not abuse this, but not
everyone has
scruples.
Another thing that would make it more palatable is if you could
have a
list of disallowed words or something that alerts library staff to
disallowed words. I'm thinking here more of words like "great" or
"stupid." As tags, these are so subjective as to be useless. Yes, I
know, this is still going against the wisdom of the masses. The Who
Wants to Be a Millionaire audience did not always know the answer,
though.
Deanna Frazee
Killeen City Library System
(254) 501-8995
(254) 501-7704 (fax)
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:open-ils-
[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of David
Fiander
Sent: Tuesday, October 07, 2008 10:25 AM
To: Evergreen Discussion Group
Subject: Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Feature inquiry
Academic research has show that "wisdom of the masses" does work in
certain specific kinds of settings. Librarything, google, delicious,
and the "ask the audience" lifeline on Who Wants to be a Millionaire
all demonstrate that it works on a more pragmatic way.
The problem is that there have to be "masses" involved in being
wise,
and "the library staff" don't count as the masses. This is why
Librarything for Libraries works: it's taking a REAL mass of book
lovers and using that as the base collection of tags and ratings for
the library catalogue, rather than trying to create a new collection
of tags from scratch in a small community (it doesn't matter how big
your library is, the set of users that will tag is small compared to
the LT community).
-David
On Tue, Oct 7, 2008 at 11:12 AM, Jason Etheridge
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
On Tue, Oct 7, 2008 at 10:54 AM, Deanna Frazee
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Wisdom of the masses....that's where my problem lies. I don't
believe
it exists :)
Wisdom of the masses is the main way that relevancy in Google
works.
Except, instead of tagging, it's linking.
--
Jason Etheridge
| VP, Community Support and Advocacy
| Equinox Software, Inc. / The Evergreen Experts
| phone: 1-877-OPEN-ILS (673-6457)
| email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
| web: http://www.esilibrary.com
