Thursday 24 June 2010

Lost Luggage


(Tip before I start - read the BBC article before you read the Clay Shirky essay - it then makes [a bit] more sense)




Lots of food for thought for an avid cataloguer like myself. Clearly the world is changing and the world of cataloguing is changing too. First, we had the move from card catalogues to the OPAC, and the introduction of the extremely useful keyword search option. Personally, I still find being able to use a range of search options from keyword to browsing something very specific (like author) very useful and in fact the more options there are the better really. But in terms of online material and the ability to dispense with standardised categorisation altogether, this is quite an innovation.

I found Shirky's comments useful in describing some of the philosophy behind how we go about classifying the world - both in the past and now. I think for librarians it is a very unsettling thought to think that there are no shelves on the web and indeed no books. I rather think that the librarians which Girl in the Moon sourced for us from 1947 would be horrified by this concept. I have to admit, that my instinct is always to want to classify correctly. The idea of tagging my blog using words which are anything less than 'accurate' does seem to go against something deep within me. As I was reading Shirky talking about the difference between people into movies, film and cinema, I found it difficult to constrain myself from crying out 'but they are the same thing! and surely I would want to find them all together!'


I have to admit that as Shirky's article went on, the more lost I became. I do recognise his overall point that simply imposing a philosophy of arranging the information of yesteryear will not work when it comes to the internet. But I just don't feel qualified to comment on whether tagging is 'better' as a concept than using standardised terms. I have always felt that the more options we have of searching for information the better, as no one system ever seems to be flawless. So for example if tagging is able to provide people with a another complimentary approach to searching an OPAC, this can only be good. The Ann Arbor District Library example is certainly incorporating user tags, but only alongside the 'traditional' system.


There are simply some things I don't understand, so I'm going to end with some questions. If anyone out there would like to answer any of them for me, I would love to read your comments.


1) How does a Google search actually work? How does it retrieve webpages of interest?


2) If tagging is an effective way of retrieving information, is this simply down to the sheer volume of information and web pages on the internet and the likelihood that somebody somewhere will use the same language as me? What if people become a little too individual?


3) What about the person who wants to find information on movies but searches under cinema? How does a tagging approach help them?


4) Have I just seriously lost the plot?

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