This study examines the question of whether tags can be useful in the process of information retrieval. Participants were asked to search a social bookmarking tool specialising in academic articles (CiteULike) and an online journal database (Pubmed) in order to determine if users found tags were useful in their search process. The actions of each participants were captured using screen capture software and they were asked to describe their search process. The preliminary study showed that users did indeed make use of tags in their search process, as a guide to searching and as hyperlinks to potentially useful articles. However, users also made use of controlled vocabularies in the journal database.
Catalogers have always had to balance adherence to cataloging rules and authority files with creating cataloging that is current and relevant to users. That dilemma has been complicated in new ways because of user demands in the world of Web 2.0. Standardized cataloging is crucial for communication between computer systems, but patrons now have an expectation of social interaction on the Internet, as evidenced by the popularity of folksonomy. After a description of traditional subject cataloging and folksonomy, this article discusses several institutions where subject cataloging is still used, but where patron interaction is also encouraged. User-generated tags can coexist with controlled vocabulary such as subject headings.
Mitis-Stanzel, Irene (2008) Social Tagging in Bibliotheken. MSc Thesis, Postgraduate programme in Library and Information Studies, Austrian National Library (Austria), University of Vienna (Austria).
The TagCommons Working Group is having a fascinating discussion about the mechanism by which a community can agree to share tag data. Here are some of the options before us:
Stefanie Panke und Birgit Gaiser stellten die Ergebnisse ihrer Untersuchung «With my head up in the clouds – social tagging aus Nutzersicht» vor. Sie haben sowohl eine Literatursichtung als auch Experteninterviews gemacht.
G. Stumme. Proc. 3rd Intl. Conf. on Formal Concept Analysis, volume 3403 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, page 315-328. Heidelberg, Springer, (2005)
M. Grahl, A. Hotho, and G. Stumme. 7th International Conference on Knowledge Management (I-KNOW '07), page 356-364. Graz, Austria, Know-Center, (September 2007)
R. Jäschke, L. Marinho, A. Hotho, L. Schmidt-Thieme, and G. Stumme. Knowledge Discovery in Databases: PKDD 2007, 11th European Conference on Principles and Practice of Knowledge Discovery in Databases, volume 4702 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, page 506-514. Berlin, Heidelberg, Springer, (2007)
C. Schmitz, A. Hotho, R. Jäschke, and G. Stumme. Data Science and Classification. Proceedings of the 10th IFCS Conf., page 261--270. Heidelberg, Springer, (July 2006)
G. Stumme. Proc. 3rd Intl. Conf. on Formal Concept Analysis, volume 3403 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, page 315-328. Heidelberg, Springer, (2005)