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Whitni WatkinsLibr202 Sec.10At your Leisure Exercise #2
Part 1Mathes describes folksonomy as being a compromised set of terms in a flat name space.
A flat name space means there is no hierarchy or specified relationship between the terms. In
folksonomy there are often auto-generated tags for different items based most often on the URL
of that item. As Mathes says, folksonomy is “simply a set of terms that a group of users tagged
content with” (Mathes, 2004, p.4). Folksonomy does not use a controlled vocabulary but instead
the vocabulary is developed from the users’ choice of words for description.
Folksonomies differ from professionalized forms of description because they are more
like categorization than classification. A professionalized form of description is hierarchical and
has relationship forming that is clear. (Mathes, 2004, p.5) Where as folksonomies are on a flat
name space that encompasses the vocabulary used by the users and there is no relationship or
hierarchy between terms.
Folksonomies have a few drawbacks with description, because there is no controlled
vocabulary the tags can become ambiguous as users use the same tag in different ways, for
example the tag “glasses” will bring up multiple titles that can relate from eye glasses to sun
glasses to water glasses. Another drawback would be the inability to have multiple word tags,
therefore there are times where distinct ideas are muddled into one single tag. (Mathes, 2004)
However even with these drawbacks there are benefits to folksonomies, hence for their
popularity and continuing existence. One of the benefits is what Mathes calls serendipity. Having
no controlled vocabulary and no relation between terms allows one to find something
unexpectedly. Second benefit is what Mathes calls desire lines, “the foot-worn paths that
sometimes appear in a landscape over time.” (Mathes, 2004, p.7) Folksonomies use web 2.0 to
its potential by creating a controlled vocabulary from the most common tags. Along with the
technical benefits are the sheer fact of time, effort and money that it takes to become involved
and effectively use a folksonomy program. You can be set up and add a handful of items within
minutes; some folksonomies even offer mobile options allowing one to upload and tag directly
from the comfort of the dinner date they may be on, I never said anything about folksonomies
teaching etiquette to members. As Mathes quotes Butterfield, “Free typing loose associations is
just a lot easier than making a decision about the degree of match to a pre-defined category.”
(Mathes, 2004; Butterfield, 2004) We live in an era where faster and easier is better,
folksonomies bring this to the desktop.
References:
Mathes, A. (2004). Folksonomies – Cooperative Classification and Communication Through
Shared Metadata. Retrieved from http://www.adammathes.com/academic/computer-mediated-
communication/folksonomies.html
Part 5
Library Thing: a folksonomy
I chose to investigate the folksonomy Library Thing. It is a system created for users to
help them easily catalog their books and search others collections. It has the main bullets of a
folksonomy including free form tagging, synonym confusion, user formed vocabulary, and
immediate results. However, Library Thing I feel brings more order to the chaos of a folksonomy
than others like Flickr, Tumblr or Del.icio.us.
Becoming a contributor to Library Thing is very simple. First, you sign up to be a
member and create yourself a profile and you can choose to make your collection private or
public and you can even decide to accept recommendations from other members. Along with
recommendations the free form vocabulary allows for a better browsing experience. Once you
have set up your profile you can begin adding items to your database. Adding books to your
database in Library Thing is very similar to doing a Z39.50 record fetch. The screen shot figure
1.1 shows the different search options when adding a book. First, you look it up, by Title, Author
or ISBN and then you fill out the tags you want to add. The tagging in Library Thing is precisely
how Mathes described folksonomies, having no controlled vocabulary and being strictly based
on the chosen tag vocabulary of the users. Since Library Thing does not have a strict controlled
vocabulary searches can still be serendipitous (see screen shot figure 1.7). I enjoy the features of
Library Thing because it gives you the option to have a controlled and less chaotic search or one
that can bring beauties you may have never found in a professionalized form.
When you add books to your database, referred to by Library Thing as a collection you
can search different libraries for the book record information is a very loose interpretation of
copy cataloguing. In the particular search above I search by ISBN in the Library of Congress, the
screen shot figure 1.2 depicts that there wasn’t a record within that specific library. Library
Thing provides for you over 700 different sources to search from including both academic and
public libraries and businesses like Amazon and OverCat. I redid the search again by ISBN
number, as I found it to bring the most relevant results. This time I searched instead with
Amazon and retrieved the correct book. In the right side column in the screen shot figure 1.3
shows the results of the search in Amazon, this source retrieved only one result. Once you have
matched the book at hand with the result you can click on the result and it will add it to your
collection.
Library Thing provides a feature to search for multiple ISBNs at one time by importing
an excel file. In relation to Mathes’ article I feel that Library Thing as a folksonomy fits except
Library Thing is closer to classification than Mathes’ puts them to be. When you search for terms
in library thing it separates them by authors, titles, tags, series, and classification making it a
little more specific in the search terms (see screen shot figure 1.4). One of the reasons Library
Thing is a typical folksonomy as Mathes describes is the fact that the description given to the
book is much more specific than one in per se Flikr. As shown in screen shot figure 1.5 when
you edit a book you can enter information such as publication date, author(s), title, series,
edition, notes, subjects, call numbers, as well as a personal rating and review of the book. Being
that there were so fields to add information I also performed an OCLC search to make sure I had
the exact record information, again performing a very lose interpretation of copy cataloguing
(see screen shot figure 1.6).
I chose Library Thing as my folksonomy because I wanted a simple, aesthetically
pleasing and inexpensive way to catalog my books while also getting recommendations from
others based on my collection or on my own curiosity. Library Thing provides codes for widgets,
word clouds based on your collection tags (see screen shot 1.10), cover viewing only (see screen
shot figure 1.9). Along with features pertaining to the sites look, they also have extensions and
applications for Twitter, Facebook, and a Library Thing mobile application. Library Thing is free
up until you have 200 books in your database then you can buy a lifetime membership for $25 or
a yearly membership for $10, once you upgrade your membership you can add as many books as
you would like. You can also have multiple databases to add too, for example you can have
different genres of books, or pleasure reading books versus textbooks.
The benefits that Mathes talked about were definitely apparent in Library Thing searches
as most of the vocabulary is user generated, aside from the book information provides by the
Z39.50 searches and my extra OCLC search. As a student aiming to achieve Professional
Librarianship, I definitely conducted a more thorough description than your average book
fanatic, so my description use allowed Library Thing to lean more closely towards classification
than categorization. Aside from my particularity of adding detailed and correct descriptions,
Library Thing has the benefit of bring immediate results. Once you add a book, you can view
how many other members have that particular book in their collection as well as its popularity
within the folksonomy and any ratings or forums brought up about the book (see screen shot
figure 1.8). Library Thing is most definitely a folksonomy, however it is not the folksonomy that
I read from Mathes, I think he would be more keen to a Library Thing as it has more benefits
than the folksonomies he described.
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