A Pile of Tags

So much information is being produced. More than human beings have ever experienced before. Cataloguing sytems such as the Dewey Decimal and Library of Congress Classifications Libraries are not actually that old—born in the late 1800s. They were able to handle information in libraries before the advent of the Web. But now, librarians could not possibly hope to categorize the huge amounts of information.

Enter bookmarking (Hammond et al.). In the absence of an imposed structure on the Web, individuals organized according to their individual needs, first of all saving links as bookmarks or favourites onto their computers. Now social bookmarking adds a sharing element to this individual activity. Tags are not being chosen by professional cataloguers—they are being chosen be people from all walks of life. The result is, in David Weinburger’s words (quoted by Rainie), “The Power of Digital Disorder”. Tag language, or folksonomy as it has been coined, has many limitations because of inconsistencies in use, and lack of control. However, “self-interested use leads to a collective abundance” (Udell). and it seems tags are here to stay.

More focused uses for them are being developed, such as through CitULike. I think that the many suggestions proposed for guidance in tagging--such as having hierarchies (a step backwards?!) suggested, having tags used by others suggested, having Boolean searches of tags made possible (Hollenback)—must not lead to too many restrictions because creators and users will be less committed to tagging.