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Trashy tags: problematic tags in LibraryThing

Trashy tags: problematic tags in LibraryThing Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide a quantitative analysis of the “messiness” of the social tags in folksonomies to see how useful they might be for general search and retrieval in library catalogs. Design/methodology/approach – The study harvested tags for ten books from LibraryThing measuring characteristics which would hinder search and retrieval in library catalogs. Findings – Because there are no rules governing the way people tag, folksonomies suffer from a certain degree of messiness and inconsistency. More than a third of this messiness is in the form of tag variations followed by tags containing non‐alphabetic characters. The other types of messiness measured were less significant, making tag variations the most prominent hindrance to search and retrieval. Originality/value – The paper supplies quantitative support for giving users guidance for creating tags in a library catalog. However, libraries should remember that part of the attraction of social tagging is its open and self‐created environment and that too many rules and regulations may discourage participation. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png New Library World Emerald Publishing

Trashy tags: problematic tags in LibraryThing

Marliese Thomas; Dana M. Caudle; Cecilia Schmitz
New Library World , Volume 111 (5/6): 13 – May 18, 2010
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References (25)

Publisher
Emerald Publishing
Copyright
Copyright © 2010 Emerald Group Publishing Limited. All rights reserved.
ISSN
0307-4803
DOI
10.1108/03074801011044098
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide a quantitative analysis of the “messiness” of the social tags in folksonomies to see how useful they might be for general search and retrieval in library catalogs. Design/methodology/approach – The study harvested tags for ten books from LibraryThing measuring characteristics which would hinder search and retrieval in library catalogs. Findings – Because there are no rules governing the way people tag, folksonomies suffer from a certain degree of messiness and inconsistency. More than a third of this messiness is in the form of tag variations followed by tags containing non‐alphabetic characters. The other types of messiness measured were less significant, making tag variations the most prominent hindrance to search and retrieval. Originality/value – The paper supplies quantitative support for giving users guidance for creating tags in a library catalog. However, libraries should remember that part of the attraction of social tagging is its open and self‐created environment and that too many rules and regulations may discourage participation.

Journal

New Library World – Emerald Publishing

Published: May 18, 2010

Keywords: Information retrieval; Quality; Literacy; Libraries

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