Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Tagging, Folksonomies, and Technorati

13.1-2 The tutorial was really quite explanatory. I was actually expecting a food site! =-) I was surprised to see that many other people have already taken a look at the SJLibrary site and have comments!

13.3 I clicked on "Theory" and discovered that there are a whole slew of tags associated with the article. Are they all related and helpful? For instance, what is "toread"? This is a tag that would be useful to the tag-maker but would not be useful to someone who is not familiar with the terminology.

13.4 The obvious usefulness is that libraries can assist by making a directory of tags used in sites like del.cio.us, so that there is some consistent usage of tags.

14.1 Yes!!! 34,081 in blog posts; 232 in tags; and 302 in the blog directory. This means that Learning 2.0 was mentioned 34,081 times in all blogs. Of that, only 232 were tagged as Learning 2.0. 302 are actually blogs about Learning 2.0

14.2 I was not too surprised by popular blogs. I was surprised to find that people were searching for more information about Paris Hilton's friend, rather than Paris Hilton. I did not see a list of popular tags, though!

14.3 Its nice to know that there are websites that are devoted to cataloging blogs. Because people can use feeds to notify themselves of news on their favorite topics, its necessary to have blog directories.

15.1 Tagging is something between formal subject headings and keywords. The obvious advantage is that searching with tags is not as random as using keywords. Its useful to clubs or secret societies as well; they can use specialized tags, which only members can understand. Of course, tagging is disadvantageous if the meaning of the tag is obscure. It can also be disadvantageous if many people use different tags to mean the same thing. At some point, someone will have to make a compendium of tags, like a dictionary, so that tags will have a commonly agreed upon definition.

15.2 I enjoyed "To a Temporary Place in Time". The author sounded truly excited about the future possibilities in libraries because of Library 2.0. Its exciting to think about all the possible applications we can implement. Libraries are already very different from how they were just ten years ago! Its astonishing to think how we can use the new web technologies to really meet the needs of individual users.

15.3 I agree with the Wikipedia assessment that Library 2.0 means that we will forever be in beta mode. We cannot allow inertia to take a hold of us; we must constantly be striving to learn new technologies if we want to meet the needs of our technophile public. It may seem stressful to think about learning all these new technologies. However, if one keeps up with emerging technology, stress will be minimal. In other words, Library 2.0 comes at an opportune time for anyone who is unfamiliar with these technologies to jump aboard all at the same time. Then, it will be up to each individual to ensure that the learning never stagnates.

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