MTaggerIntegrating Social Bookmarking into Library Content

Ken VarnumWeb Systems Manager

University of Michigan Library

Michigan Library Association 2009

Introduction

A Brief History of Social Bookmarking

• Late 1990s – lots of small networked bookmark services (links in the protocloud)

• Early 2000s saw Del.icio.us come into being

– Added tagging to online bookmarks

– Coined term “Social Bookmarking”

– Gained millions of users, eventually sold to Yahoo!

Tagging Moves Into Mainstream

• Facebook

• Technorati

• Flickr

• Amazon

• Twitter (#mla2009)

• Etc., etc., etc.

Why?

• Seems that everyone feels the need to categorize & organize (not just us librarians!)

• Tool for us to share our knowledge, expertise, opinion

• Leave tracks for the future – Kilroy Was Here

Tagging at MLibrary

• Enhance findability of objects

• Enable future researchers to follow existing paths

• Generate source of improved metadata

• Let our patrons find things a second time

Tagging Goodness isBaked Right In

• Web site

• Catalog

• Digital images

• Digital publications

• Bookmarklet for everything else

Usage vs. Expectations

• Enhance findability of objects• Enable future researchers to follow existing

paths• Generate source of improved metadata• Let our patrons find things a second time

Usage

• As of 11/04/09• 2395 total users (1015 active)• 5033 tags (4145 unique)• 11552 items tagged

I Tried It, But I Didn’t Inhale

• Majority of taggers tag one item. Once.• Faculty, staff, students• Not as broadly / deeply as we’d like

– Most items tagged by one person– Most items tagged with a single tag

A Note on Privacy

• Tagging tied to U-M single sign-on (uniqname); guest accounts welcome

• Accountability & public face• Balance of anonymity and sharing• Most feedback on this issue from a single

source

Usability Study

• Conducted over four months in summer 2008• Two students at U-M School of Information• Librarians on steering committee• Heuristic evaluation• In-depth user interviews

Usability: Interface Problems

Usability: Interface Problems

Usability: Purpose of Tagging

• Unclear to users• Personal motivations are stronger than social

motivations • “What’s in it for me” not apparent• Tagging is a "Librarian" thing

Usability Recommendations

• Tag cloud display on pages• Tag cloud display in MTagger• Preference for tag display alongside

traditional search results • Handling of “collections”• Workflow

Lessons Learned

• Motivations• Outcomes • Enable personal reference library• Contextualize the material

Motivations

• To find things again• To pull together research• To share with others

Outcomes

• Easier sharing:– Tags– Tagged items– User lists

• Publish to other social networking tools

Personal Reference Library

• Tagging is less a goal than a byproduct

• Be more like Zotero, CiteULike,

• Reinvention of ‘My Library’

Context is King

• A tagged item shouldn’t wander the wilderness

• What’s related?

• How can I use it?

In a Broader Context

• There’s an RLG group devoted to social media

• A survey is underway at Survey Monkey:http://bit.ly/4xN52Z

• A few findings from our analysis – courtesy of Karen Smith-Yoshimura at RLG

Some Observations

• Great variety of sites – many new• Success tied to objective and audience, not

necessarily traffic• Value in leveraging “sense of community”• Some sites heavily moderated, others not at all• Strict credentialing limits effectiveness• Lots of features of little value if not used and

require more documentation, overhead

Courtesy Karen Smith-Yoshimura, RLG

Some More Observations

• Few sites use ranking, filtering mechanisms, use patterns to guide visitors

• Institution-specific sites have fewer contributions than aggregate sites

• Tags contributed on network-level of more value • Tagging is most useful when there is no existing

metadata (e.g. photos, videos, audio)• Need “critical mass” and “sense of community”

(existing or created)Courtesy Karen Smith-Yoshimura, RLG

Why Contribute? (Prelim)

• Tie-in to community of fellow enthusiasts• Ongoing conversation from own lives• Pragmatic• Feeling of contributing to the “brand” of

the institution or community• Enhance own reputation

Courtesy Karen Smith-Yoshimura, RLG

MTagger’s Goals Today

• Put tagging in the flow

• Put emphasis on the patron

• Tagging as background activity; saving as foreground

• Improve the interface for secondary discovery

• Mirlyn (catalog) is model

Bigger Picture

• Benefit to scale (delicious, flickr)• Benefit to academic (“serious”) focus• Mechanism needed for sharing tags across

libraries

Open APIs

• Programmatically query for an item/user/tag, find out what associated elements are

• Uses include research guides, current awareness

• Are we already pulling old Mirlyn items into Vufind Mirlyn via MTagger?

Open Code

• Current MTagger is Available• Contact me for link• Future code will also be available

Open Tagging

• We would be happy to explore building social bookmarking into other library sites using our code; code is available.

• The more the merrier• Want to tag in our pool?• Contact me

Concluding Thoughts

• Social Bookmarking is a social phenomenon

• Has a clear motivation for the tagger – find my stuff again

• Connect that motivation to the library patron

• Research trails will follow

Thank You

Email: varnum@umich.eduTwitter: @varnumRSS4Lib (blog): http://www.rss4lib.com/Slides: http://www.slideshare.net/KenVarnum

MTagger: http://www.lib.umich.edu/mtagger/