Re: Book tagging: Amazon and LibraryThing

I totally agree with this post (I just got on this list, very interesting so
far!). I read a post to someone on LibraryThing asking her what the heck a
certain word meant that she had tagged with. It turned out it was her
daughter's name. Then I realized that I had tagged my kids' books with their
names and they might not want everyone in the world to know what books they
owned, so I had to go back and change them to something that wouldn't be so
obvious, but would let me know where to find them (because I read their
books all the time.) Definitely a way to personal tag needs to be developed.
What value is it to me to see 'hb' or 'Feb 14' (I presume the date someone
bought or read book) among tags?

Another thing I have been thinking about LibraryThing (and not really
terribly pertinent in this conversation) in connection with something I read
recently in Alberto Manguel's The Library at Night. He says "By housing as
many books as possible under one single roof, the librarians of Alexandria
also tried to protect them from the risk of destruction that might result if
left in what were deem to be less caring hands.)" Out of 34 pages of titles
I have cataloged so far in LibraryThing, 3 and 1/2 pages are all titles I do
not share with anyone else. (Obviously, some libraries out there have most
of these), but it is an interesting thought that if libraries were targeted
for destruction, there is some way out there now that people could know what
books had been saved by being in someone's personal library and maybe even
be able to use it.

Melody
Melody Layton McMahon
Unit Leader for Database Maintenance,
Liaison to Religious Studies, Math and Music
Grasselli Library
John Carroll University


-----Original Message-----
From: Next generation catalogs for libraries
[mailto:NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of Deborah Kaplan
Sent: Friday, February 23, 2007 11:24 AM
To: NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu
Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] Book tagging: Amazon and LibraryThing

On Fri, 23 Feb 2007, Tim Spalding wrote:
> >Social tagging:
>
> This is a big and interesting topic. Here's $.02.
>
> There's a balance between selfish and altruistic, and some gradients
> in between, like when a member of a church tags things for the benefit
> of a small group. There is also, if not an incentive to tag
> altruistically, something of a desire not to appear a fool. I see this
> on LT all the time. Everyone's tags are public, so people are
> conscious to note that that Ann Coulter book was a gift. Or, take my
> brother (please!), who tags his small collection of semi-erotica
> "sex!" Wink wink nudge nudge.

This is actually a limitation in the current concept of social tagging, to
me. On LibraryThing, for example, I want to tag my books in a way that will
be useful to the larger social tagging
pool: "fiction", perhaps, or "cyberpunk". But I also want to tag them in
ways which will be useful to me: "gift from mum", "on the shelf in the
dining room", "chewed on by a cat". Out of all of those, I can only see
"gift from mum" potentially being something which adds to the social tagging
pool ("look, everybody's copies of _How to Become a Better Daughter in 90
Days_ is tagged 'gift from mum' or some variant!"). But certainly all of
those tags in the second set are what I would consider to be private. Nobody
else's business but mine. Where books are laid out in my house, personal
information about provenance or condition, statements about what they mean
to me ("comfort book", for example).

So because social tagging as a concept is social, it's designed as public.
And therefore, because I desire to keep certain information private, I can't
use it for personal cataloging.
Since I can't make some tags private and viewable only to me, tags are
limited in their functionality as cataloging tools. For me.

-Deborah
--
Deborah Kaplan
Digital Initiatives Librarian
Brandeis University