Wednesday, March 7, 2012

OK, now I feel stupid

Looking for the "tag" option on Blogger has reminded me of a lesson on tagging and folksonomy that I did in LIBE 465.  I was so focused on the word "tag" that I didn't notice the "Labels" box at the bottom of my posting area, LOL.  After posting my last entry I went to the Blogger help option and found the information in about 3 seconds.  My plan is to now go back to previous posts to add appropriate tags.

Berger and Trexler (2010) say that tagging is "at the heart of social bookmarking" (p. 45) and I am finding this to be true in my own Web 2.0 explorations.  Good tagging allows us to find information through key words but the trick is using key words that others will also use.  Some librarians, as suggested in Berger and Trexler (2010), are concerned that folksonomy should not replace taxonomy, a more traditional tagging system.  I, like some librarians, do not believe that one has to replace the other.  I believe the two can work together to make searching and finding information more effective for everyone.

Update:  As I was going through to add labels to my posts I discovered that there is a limit of 200 characters.  For my last update post I well exceeded that limit and then had to go back and remove some tags.  This was harder to do than I thought as I was really trying to cover all the topics in my post.  I wish Blogger had a "character count" like Twitter so that I can know when I am nearing my character limit.

References:

Berger, P., & Trexler, S. (2010). Choosing Web 2.0 tools for learning and teaching in a digital world. Santa Barbara, CA: Libraries Unlimited.

2 comments:

  1. I agree with what you say about taxonomy and folksonomy working symbiotically. If you haven't read it already you may find "OPACs in the Clouds" by Webb and Nero interesting.
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  2. I am going to follow your lead and insert better tags for old posts. Thanks!

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