Because of my newfound enthusiasm for del.icio.us (and oldfound enthusiasm for the word "folksonomy"), I read the article "Tagging & Social Bookmarking" in the September/October 2007 edition of Library Technology Reports.
I love the collaborative nature of tagging, how it's something you can do at home in your PJs, yet it might help someone on the other side of the country find just what they were looking for. That said, I think a totally awesome use of tagging highlighted in the article is in readers advisory and how the tags you apply to a book might help someone else discover and enjoy that book.
I'm intrigued by the idea of integrating the RA function into a library's catalog, rather than having it as a seperate blog on the Web site. What if patrons were able to log in to their library accounts and tag items held by the library? Or even rate them, like people do on Amazon.com (possibly my favorite Web site and the standard I hold everything else to)? Yes, I realize that in application this could possibly open a very very large can of worms, but as I said, it's an intriguing idea. I already think a library catalog should basically look just like Amazon, complete with pictures of the book/DVD/CD/whatever, links to similar items, reviews, etc. Yes, I think that in part because I love Amazon so much, but it's also because that is what a lot of users are coming to expect from technology. If Amazon can offer them a full buffet of information, why can't the library?
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment