There is an article on folksonomy tags in the latest issue of ITAL
(Louise F. Spiteri, "The Structure and form of folksonomy tags: The
Road to the public library catalog". Information Technology and
Libraries 26(3): 13-25).
The article does a bit of compare & contrast regarding the use of
tags in Delicious, Furl, and Technorati. For the most part, the
author finds the tags adhere to NISO guidelines for the structure of
terms. (Ironic.) From the article:
In other words, although ambiguity and polysemy are certainly
problematic areas, most of the tags in each of the three sites
are unambiguous in their meaning and thus conform to NISO
recommendations.
Regarding library catalogs:
Should library catalogs decide to incorporate folksonomies, they
should consider creating clearly written recommendations for the
choice and form of tags that could include the following areas:
* The difference between count and noncount nouns...
* One standard way in which to construct multiterm tags...
* A link to a recognized online dictionary and to Wikipedia to
enable user to determine the meanings of terms...
* An acceptable use policy...
'Interesting reading.
--
Eric Lease Morgan
University Libraries of Notre Dame
(574) 631-8604
Received on Mon Oct 22 2007 - 12:12:38 EDT