Democratizing the subject heading

I found another hot social software application called Library Thing. This is software that allows you to create a catalog of book records that you, or anyone you want, can tag and and add to. This discussion has been going around, but wouldn't it be interesting (useful?) if you could set up a directory of tags (supplied by students, faculty, and staff) for your library's collection. This way you would have increased options for searching-the more formal OPAC and the very informal tag directory.

I don't think giving students more options is such a bad idea. What I would worry about is putting the time into creating it and having no interest or response from the people it is created for...you need that social input in a tagging system.

Update 5/24/2006

I have been thinking about this idea more and I just wanted to get some points down before I forget them.

First, I think we have to remember that tagging is almost entirely a selfish activity. The motivation to do it seems strictly about organizing your own stuff-your own pictures, your own links- so you can find them later or share them with friends. What makes these social bookmarking directories work is the fact that you can search others selfish tagging activities. If you find taggers with similar selfish organizational intentions you suddenly have access to a great deal of content that will more than likely be useful.

When it comes to a library OPAC there will clearly be a lack of interest in tagging it from most ordinary users, there just is no motivation that I can see. To create a useful directory you would need library staff tagging records. This is the workflow I thought of. You could have the cataloging department (in the case of my library- cataloging person) tag each new acquisition when they process the book.

To make this valuable as a secondary way to search the library collection you would need tags that went beyond the controlled subject headings and metadata categories offered in the traditional OPAC. My thinking is the content should be tagged at a finer granularity than that of the catalog. What level of granularity is what I am not clear about. It would depend on the type of material being tagged. If it was just a plan old non-fiction book on one suject you could include tags that referenced chapter or section content. This would provide useful fodder for searching.

If you go beyond the simple example of a non-fiction book the process just seems to get hazy and complicated. For instance, how would you tag the content of a fiction book in any meaningful way beyond what the OPAC does. It seems you would need to read the book first to figure out the theme or something like that. What about an encyclopedia, would you makes tags of the entire index, with each entry having its own. There is just not enough time and the sheer variety of methods of content delivery make this seem like an impossible task.

You could compromise and only tag certain genres of books, but this would leave you with an incomplete (and hence unuseful) directory. Would this not lead to a situation where the directory would be useful to one type of student searching for one type of material, while being completely useless for others. How confusing is that?

Also, if you left the process of tagging solely to the library staff, doesn't this leave the "social" aspects of tagging (and all its benefits) at the curb? Even if you could make a useful tag directory out of an OPAC don't you think that this ability to search the collection in two ways would lead to confusion on the part of the patron? Its hard enough getting our students to understand and actually use the regular catalog, now we want to offer an option? Is this something that we want to do?

So, I really want to believe that creating a database of tags for a library collection is a great idea, in theory it is. The obstacles are just too many at this time (in the way I am thinking of the process) to do it. Please readers convince me that it is a good idea to tag a library catalog, I really want to believe.

Update 5/24/2006...

I think I have the solution to the problem. Where my thinking went astray is seeing the social tag directory and the OPAC as two separate entities (and nary the twain shall meet). What if you could incorporate peoples' tag "suggestions" into the library's catalog? This would negate the confusion of having two different search databases.

This is what I am imagining. Someone (anyone) is searching the catalog and they come across a record that for some reason or another really excites them. Maybe it perfectly coincides with their research, or its their favorite book of all time, whatever, it doesn't matter. If we could have a link in the catalog to an email account with a notice such as this:

"Think you know what this book is about. Tag it!"

The user could easily send a tag suggestion to the appropriate library staff member in charge of catalog updating. It could then be incorporated into the record, in effect enriching it. The person in charge of this tag incorporation could act as a filter. Of course you could set up your own filtering parameters, but I would say the looser the better. Anything short of vandalism or blatant misrepresentation should be allowed. The result would be a better and less authoritarian catalog.

Now this would create other issues. One would be in what way would this new data be incorporated into the catalog? Should it be inputed into a pre-existing field like subject or should a new one be made to differentiate between the two. I think the best way is the one that is most user-friendly, and user-friendly means as flexible and robust as possible. So I would say make a new sub-category under "subject" labeled "tags" or "social tags." Make the default subject search a search of both "subject" and "tag" but give the ability to search them separately.

This is a very local endeavor. If we made it global then we would we have a very powerful tool. Since this would be a process that effected the catalog, and most library catalogs are connected to OCLC through WorldCat it seems that creating a linked directory of tags that could be applied to all WorldCat catalogs would be a way to get a wide array of user tags and the most enrichment possible.

Think about it, a bunch of tags created for one library book in multiple locations- recognized, sorted, cataloged and stored by OCLC. OCLC could then make all these tags available for linkage to any local library whom wanted them. It would be a process that starts locally, aggregates globally and then disseminates locally again.

OCLC needs to get on this project.