Sunday, May 17, 2009

Library 2.0

To me, Library 2.0 (or Web 2.0) is all about collaboration. In the past, The Library distributed information to the public through materials, online catalogs and informational websites. There was no opportunity for the user to contribute anything. Now, Library 2.0 provides the users an opportunity to particpate in this distribution of information by allowing them to review or "tag" items in an online catalog, add their own content to library websites by uploading pictures, video or text. I like how this shifts the perception of the library from an institution that is unapproachable and all-knowing to a place where information is shared among all users.

As a cataloger, I am often amused by how many of my colleagues villianize the concept of user tagging in our OPACs. There is definitely an attitude out there that we know what is best because we know the controlled vocabulary, we know AACR2 and that there is no way that just ANY user could do what we do. The very idea! It would be chaos at the library!

Um...sorry, but no. I think our users have a good idea what they are looking for when they come to the library but they get frustrated when their search terms don't match our controlled vocabulary. For example, if you come to the library looking for a cookbook, is the first search term that comes to mind really "Cookery"? Not so much. If users were able to tag items themselves, then a new vocabulary would emerge that is more useable to our patrons. Want a cookbook? Simply enter "cooking" or "cookbook" or "barbecue" or "BBQ". They would ALL produce results. What a novel idea, right?

1 comment:

  1. Even better, how about deriving organization from the stuff library users read? Mendeley does exactly that, extracting information from PDFs and automatically tagging them. Harnessing this would not only give you your new user-derived vocabulary, but could even power a recommendation engine for stuff they don't know they want yet!

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