Definitely starting to get into some unknown territory here with tagging and social bookmarking.
I think this particular unfamiliarity has been a bit of a struggle for me to get my head around -- "why would you need to tag", "what are the benefits". I can see how tags can short cut a lot of research rigmarole. To me, it sort of seems a bit inadequate though, relying on people to have tagged correctly. And it does put into play the issue of subjective categorising -- are the tags really what they should be?? Who decides?? Or, more specifically, who should decide?? Perhaps I'm still stuck in taxonomy and need to evolve my thinking towards folksonomy eh??
It's possible I just haven't been completely sold on this yet. Needless to say, social bookmarking has taken off and it's something that we as a Library would need to get hold of and not fall behind on. It's probably a really useful tool for those who are the Web 2.0 generation. Personally, for me (and not that I'm really far removed from that so-called younger generation anyways ...) it's something I can understand conceptually could be useful but I think I still need to be sold vis-a-vis its overall practicality (if that makes sense).
What I do think is good about it is the shared/social aspect of it. I guess that in itself seems to be the whole nexus of Web 2.0 anyway ...
Anyhoo: http://del.icio.us/mikey66e
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Keep in mind that social tagging/folksonomies and taxonomies do not have to be mutually exclusive!
In the Enterprise space, i have been advocating the hybrid approach which you might find has some benefits that can be leveraged in traditional libraries as well. I recently published a free ebook on the subject please see this post for a summary and a link to download:
http://danielabarbosa.blogspot.com/2008/06/folksonomies-and-taxonomies-in.html
Would love your feedback!
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