April Uncorking the Varietals: Social Tagging, Folksonomies & Controlled Vocabularies Margaret Maurer Head, Catalog and Metadata Kent State University Libraries and Media Services

2 April 2008 In wine making - What is a Varietal? A wine made from a single, named grape variety.  Cabernet Sauvignon wines are made from cabernet sauvignon grapes  Chardonnay wines are made from chardonnay grapes

3 April 2008 In information seeking – on the Web or in the catalog Access and identification systems may be controlled by librarians–controlled vocabularies Access and identification systems may be dynamically generated by users–social tagging, folksonomies These are different varieties of access and identification systems

4 April 2008 This presentation Controlled vocabularies Social Tagging Folksonomies My recommendations First we’ll talk about the cabernet sauvignons – the controlled vocabs

5 April 2008 Purpose of a controlled vocabulary To create sets of objects To serve as a bridge between the searcher’s language and the author’s language To provide consistency To improve precision and recall

6 April 2008 Characteristics of a controlled vocabulary Features a single, authorized form of heading Often features a syndetic structure of cross- references Based on belief that the successful use of the catalog is based on the quality of the individual records

7 April 2008 The authority record structure Records the standardized form Ensures the gathering together of records via that access point Enables standardized catalog records Documents decisions taken Records all other heading forms and provides links from them to the standardized form

8 April 2008 Benefits of controlled vocabularies Promotes discovery generally Promotes discovery when the aboutness of something has nothing to do with words in the resource or its representation  Imaginative literature (Genre headings)  Humanities Promotes pre-coordinated displays expand access–

9 April 2008 Benefits when combined with keyword searching Keywords hook into strings of terms most efficiently Users can be routed by pre- coordinated strings

10 April 2008 Controlled vocabularies support faceted catalogs Encore Evergreen Endeca WorldCat Local All provide hyperlinks to authorized headings

11 April 2008 Weaknesses of controlled vocabularies The artificially controlled language is not necessarily natural language—Cookery anyone? Subject searches are the most problematic for users It may work better in theory than in practice It is costly to perform necessary maintenance Cost is seen to outweigh the benefits by many administrators

12 April 2008 Library of Congress Subject Headings - LCSH Has a long and well-documented history Commonly used Is contained in millions of bibliographic records Strong institutional support from LC

13 April 2008 More benefits of LCSH The rich vocabulary covers most subjects It imposes synonym and homograph control There are machine assisted authority control mechanisms There is pre-coordination with LCC The music subject heading system is well developed

14 April 2008 Weaknesses of LCSH It is a generalist taxonomy that can’t always provide needed granularity Terminology currency It doesn’t allow for post-search coordination (it is pre-coordinated) It suffers from LC Collection bias

15 April 2008 More weaknesses of LCSH Training needed  Requires some orientation to use effectively  Is not always accurately applied by catalogers Maintenance  It is difficult to maintain when changes occur

16 April 2008 Authority control outside the catalog Data critical mass  tipping point?  Homogeneity of data in terms of subject matter  Requirements within data community’s users for specificity  Size  Computing power Wikipedia’s “disambiguation”

17 April 2008 ZoomInfo

18 April 2008

19 April 2008 What if we did open up our authority files to the web? National Library of Australia’s People Australia Project Wikipedia Persondata-Tool Danowski-en.pdfhttp:// Danowski-en.pdf

20 April 2008 Is ontology overrated? Physicality requires ontologies for searching, but systems with hyperlinks do not Browse versus search may eliminate the need for creating lists of authorized headings

21 April 2008 Ontological classification Works well when the domain to be organized is small, has formal categories, has stable entities, is restricted and has clear edges Does not work well when the domain to be organized is large, has no formal categories, is unstable, is unrestricted and has no clear edges

22 April 2008 Ontological classification Works well when the participants are expert catalogers, authoritative sources of judgement, coordinated users or expert users Does not work well when the participants are uncoordinated, armature, naïve or non- authoritative

23 April 2008 Now we talk about the Chardonnays – social tagging and folksonomies

24 April 2008 What are tags? Keywords or terms associated with or assigned to a piece of information They enable keyword- based classification and search of information

25 April 2008 Common Web sites that use tags include Del.icio.us – Social bookmarking site Flickr – Image tagging LibraryThing Gmail - Webmail YouTube

26 April 2008 Tags, and therefore social tags and folksonomies are Dynamic categorization systems Often created on-the-fly Chosen as relevant to the user – not to the creator, cataloger or researcher A social activity (more on this later) Hopefully one small step toward a more interactive and responsive library system

27 April 2008 Social tags are Non-hierarchical A way to create links between items by the creation of sets of objects A means of connecting with others interested in the same things

28 April 2008 Way baaack in 2003… Del.icio.us includes identity in its social bookmarking Flickr includes tags Lists of tags became a tool for serendipitous discovery (folksonomies)

29 April 2008 Why is tagging so popular? It is easy and enjoyable It has a low cognitive cost It is quick to do It provides self and social feedback immediately

30 April 2008 People tag things To find them again To get exposure and traffic To voice their opinions Incidentally as they perform other tasks To take advantage of functionality built on top of a folksonomy To play a game or earn points

31 April 2008 Putting the social in tagging Tags allow for social interaction because when we navigate by tags we are directly connecting with others People tag for their own benefit

32 April 2008 Don’t confuse tags with keywords or full-text searching Keywords are behind the scenes, tags are often visibly aggregated for use and browsing Keywords can not be hyper-linked Keywords imply searching, tags imply linking Full-text searching is passive, tagging is active It’s more about connecting items rather than categorizing them.

33 April 2008 What is a Folksonomy? Folksonomy refers to an “emergent, grassroots taxonomy”  An aggregate collections of tags  A bottom-up categorical structure development  An emergent thesaurus A term coined by Thomas Vander Wal

34 April 2008 How do folksonomies work? The searcher defines the access, but The aggregation of the terms has public value It’s a typically messy democratic approach

35 April 2008 What makes folksonomies popular? Their dynamic nature works well with dynamic resources They’re personal They lower barriers to cooperation

36 April 2008 Tagging and the consequent folksonomies work best when It’s easy to do It’s not commercial in nature Taggers have ownership Taggers are more likely to tag their own stuff than they are your stuff It has been shown to work well on the Web

37 April 2008 The unexpected development: terminological consensus Collective action yields common terms Stabilization may be caused by imitation and shared knowledge The wisdom of the crowd

38 April 2008 Is your tagging influenced by my tagging? Of course it is! People are beginning tag in ways that make it easier for others to fine like stuff Shared meaning consequently evolves for tags Most used tags become most visible

39 April 2008 Strengths of folksonomies Cost-effective way to organize Internet Social benefits It’s inclusive For many environments, they work well

40 April 2008 Issues with meaning They do not yield the level of clarity that controlled vocabularies do Term ambiguity – words with multiple meanings No synonym control

41 April 2008 Issues with specificity Variable specificity for related terms Broadness of terms impacts precision – terms are often imprecise Mixed perspectives

42 April 2008 Issues with structure Singular and plural forms create redundant headings No guidelines for the use of compound headings, punctuation, word order No scope notes No cross references

43 April 2008 Issues with accuracy Collective ‘wisdom’ of the tagging community How does wrong information impact retrieval Conflicting cultural norms Sometimes authority counts

44 April 2008 “Spagging” and other problems Opening doors to opinion tags Tagging wars “Spagging”  Spam tagging

45 April 2008 Tidying up the tags…? Lists of tagging norms have been developed Are there programmatic solutions? Users know they are looking at tags By tidying, do we destroy the essence of why this works? Do we realistically have the resources?

46 April 2008 Recommendations Don’t assume that one size fits all Retain controlled vocabularies in the catalog Explore ways to use controlled vocabularies to help organize the internet by re-purposing controlled vocabularies that already exist Invite Folksonomies to the party in the catalog to gain their benefits Explore ways to combine the two systems

47 April 2008 Recommendations When you invite folksonomies into the catalog, do so strategically, and carefully Don’t put terms in the same index as controlled vocabularies Find ways to associate terms applied across editions of works Need for mediation, or at least observation The crowd is not necessarily the best arbiter of specific terminology

48 April 2008 Recommendations Always remember why people tag People tag things because they want to find them, not because they want others to find them Be aware that this will impact the quality of the terms, and their frequency

49 April 2008 Recommendations Controlled vocabularies could be better utilized than they currently are Subject structures are underutilized in the ILS Controlled vocabularies that exist are not being exported to the Web Well-connected terms foster discovery – let’s connect them. Index those cross references where available

50 April 2008 Questions? Margaret Maurer