Possibilities for Social Tagging in a VR Collection Jenn Riley Metadata Librarian Indiana University Digital Library Program

April 28, 2007Power to the People: ARLIS What are we doing at IU?  Nothing in production yet but much interest  DIDO VR collection 2006 experimentation with FA faculty contributing subject terms Anticipated (but unscheduled) major overhaul to system will include methods for user participation  Variations digital audio plans Structured metadata for some fields Synchronizing scores and audio  But how do we decide what to implement?

April 28, 2007Power to the People: ARLIS Purposes of tags  Golder & Huberman classification based on study of del.icio.us tags Identifying what (or who) it is about (overwhelmingly most frequent usage) Identifying what it is Identifying who owns it Refining categories Identifying qualities or characteristics Self reference Task organizing

April 28, 2007Power to the People: ARLIS Beyond “tags”  Identification  Structured metadata Factual information (dates, etc.) Subjective information (subjects, etc.)  Ratings, reviews, commentary, etc.  Relationships Secondary sources Multiple versions Alignment

April 28, 2007Power to the People: ARLIS Decisions to make for a tagging implementation  Who  What  Incentive  Control

April 28, 2007Power to the People: ARLIS Who  Libraries have been expanding “who” creates records Copy cataloging “De-professionalization” of cataloging Vendor records  VR world also sees need for expansion UCAI Efforts to get data from museums  Our users often know a great deal more about these resources than we do

April 28, 2007Power to the People: ARLIS Options for “who”  Anybody  Those who register .edu addresses  IU community  Specific roles within IU community  Specific designated authorized users

April 28, 2007Power to the People: ARLIS What  Tagging and user-contributed metadata isn’t necessarily unstructured del.icio.us tag descriptionstag descriptions Flickr machine tagsmachine tags Wikipedia:Persondata  Systems could open up user contributions in some areas but not others

April 28, 2007Power to the People: ARLIS Options for “what”  Unstructured tagging only, separate from cataloger-created metadata  Contribute to new areas of the system reserved for non- descriptive uses of tags  Fix errors  Some metadata elements Subjective data Factual data “Extra” data elements Commentary  Any metadata element

April 28, 2007Power to the People: ARLIS Incentive  Tagging is work  Users must have a reason to perform that work  Asking users to participate in our existing metadata creation workflows is unlikely to be successful; we need to move into their space  Users more likely to tag resources they already have an interest in

April 28, 2007Power to the People: ARLIS Options for incentive  Money  Manage personal resources  Assistance with needed task  Recognition  Contribution to the greater good  Fun

April 28, 2007Power to the People: ARLIS Control  A common assertion is that library-created metadata is consistent and error-free. This is a fallacy.  Is it really more important for metadata creators to know about structural rules than about the content itself?  Must re-examine where we need structural control of metadata  The system can play a much larger role in enforcing what control we do need

April 28, 2007Power to the People: ARLIS Options for control  Allow all user contributions to appear immediately No formal editorial mechanisms Editors oversee contributions after the fact  Streamlined approval mechanism  Some elements less control, some more  User contributions as suggestions to be independently verified by metadata experts

April 28, 2007Power to the People: ARLIS System contributions to controlled data  Pick lists  Spell check  Behind-the-scenes authority files  Normalization algorithms  Creative interface design  …

April 28, 2007Power to the People: ARLIS Everything in moderation  Use the general idea, not necessarily all the details  Opening up metadata creation to users does not necessarily mean a complete loss of control  No single approach will be enough on its own  Always remember what we’re using this metadata for

April 28, 2007Power to the People: ARLIS Moving forward (1)  Libraries can’t continue to rely exclusively on in- house cataloging  We can achieve our overall goals while allowing new mechanisms along the way  Users are one additional source of metadata we must tap  We must match metadata needs to the tasks users are best equipped to perform

April 28, 2007Power to the People: ARLIS Moving forward (2)  Each system may make different choices regarding where user-contributed metadata makes sense  Good interfaces for metadata collection will be key  We must use the best ideas for user participation, and adapt them for the library environment

April 28, 2007Power to the People: ARLIS For more information   These presentation slides:  Golder, Scott A. & Bernardo A. Huberman, “The Structure of Collaborative Tagging Systems,” Journal of Information Science 32 (2), 2006, 198–208.