Week 11 Post

What are the pros and cons of tagging in library catalogs?

The upside of tagging content in library catalogs is that by doing so, one can elaborate on the "aboutness" of an information resource after the fact. Doing so can enable a degree of flexibility in describing materials after they have already been added to a collection. This can enable users to find information more quickly and easily, as the tags can be progressively added to further elaborate on the information resource's contents. Tagging, when coupled with a keyword based search engine, can make it easier and faster to retrieve records in materials. User submitted tags can also prove to be very helpful in getting more perspectives on the contents of a resource. For example, after a user returned a book, having read it to completion, a user can then add tags to elaborate on its contents, and thus creating more representative records of the material. This can prove to help improve services at the library and optimize limited library resources. Naturally, since a team of librarians cannot possibly read all of the materials in a library's collection, user submitted tagging can prove to be a very cost-effective way to create more detailed information records.

The downside of tagging in library catalogs arises from a general lack of procedure and structure pertaining to how exactly tags will be created. If a tag is added to a system, it is important that the tag is not only representative of the content contained herein, but also that it may become problematic if a tag added is similar if not identical to a tag that already exists in the record. For example if someone writes a tag for "cow" and then someone else writes a tag for "bovine", should both tags exist? What if other records with similar content only contain one or the other tag? How will that work? This can lead to very inconsistent retrievals when it comes to library records. The the system also contains a form of thesaurus functionality to consider such entries and add them across the board to all similar records, this might not be an issue, but I am unsure as to whether or not such technology exists. Another major issue is what to do if a user decides to add inappropriate if not offensive terms to a record for fun. Often times user-tagged systems are not well policed, and this can lead to very troubling implications later. It is important for staff to keep close watch over records for such issues; possibly by adding a user submitted flagging function for offensive tags.