It’s Tax Time! —The renewable value of taxonomies

While time does not allow me to compose a full-fledged research article on the value of taxonomies, I did want to include a short list emphasizing it’s important place in the library world. Much of my research existed in the article Folksonomy Folktales by Tom Reamy, which is accessible here through St. Kate’s WilsonWeb database.

• There are many other taxonomies other than Dewey Decimal and LCSH, and using these two as examples is “as if you did an analysis of boats and picked the Titanic as your example. It’s really big and cumbersome, and it’s made of brittle steel held together with bad rivets. It costs too much and is too difficult to build. It’s slow and hard to steer, runs into icebergs and kills lots of people” (Reamy 2009). Pretty great analogy, right?
• User tags can come from specific populations, which might reinforce stereotypes (Rolla). Unlike folksonomies, taxonomies are not the “authority of the majority” (Reamy 2009).
• Taxonomies have consistent grammatical form, tense, etc.
• Taxonomies still relevant, SLA just formed an organization for taxonomies and controlled subject headings. (Taxonomy Comes to SLA)
• Good taxonomies will look at the past and the present trends and allow easy change for future (Reamy 2009).
• Study shows that many tags were “personal tags” not meant to benefit all users (Rolla 2009).

As a library student, I believe in the importance of great descriptive cataloging and accurate, descriptive subject headings. Though I see many problems with LCSH, I know that librarians themselves, or at least my peers in school, seek to be fair, democratic, unbiased, unprejudiced, and most of all successful in leading users to the information they seek. There is great merit in trained professionals evaluating an item by its content and cataloging it based on set vocabulary. But good, efficient, fair, and relevant vocabulary needs to exist first. I’m not sure what the answer is, but I do think it’s a combination of many existing and emerging forms of organizing knowledge. I look forward to the opportunity to have my part in it.

Folksepticons and Taxotobots: can they coexist?

My five-year-old son has a new obsession almost every week. My favorite was the Star Wars phase when he loved R2-D2, pronouncing it “R-tootie-2". Recently, his obsession has turned to Transformers. We rented a DVD of these Robots in Disguise (or as he says, Robots in the Skies) for him to live off of during the recent holiday weekend. After he watched a few episodes by himself, my son came running joyously into the kitchen declaring, “Optimus Prime and Galvatron are friends!” Now, my son is one smart kid, but I just knew he got this wrong somehow. Optimus Prime and Galvatron (formerly Megatron) are sworn enemies. It wasn’t possible for them to be on the same side, and even less possible for them to become friends. But being the good mother I am, I sat down to replay the episode that had my son so overjoyed. To my astonishment, he was right! Optimus Prime and Galvatron join forces. They even shake hands. They become united by their common enemy: the megabot Unicron. Why, my fellow library students, am I telling you this story? I learned that day that if Autobots and Decepticons could join forces and fight for the greater good, other sworn enemies could unite, too. And if this can exist in the library world, amazing things could happen. Maybe libraries will do-away with fines and patrons will turn in their materials early. Maybe Internet grants from the government would say not to include filters. And maybe, just maybe, authorized subject headings can coexist with user-made tagging.

As discussed in other articles, authorized vocabularies, or taxonomies, and user-made vocabularies, or folksonomies, are both significant and relevant methods of cataloging. However, popular opinion would suggest that each school of thought is so different, so at-odds with the other, that it would be impossible for the two to unite. I am happy to say that in my research, I have found many examples of taxonomies and folksonomies working together in websites that allow users to find the information they seek.

In Smith’s (2008) article “Tagging: Emerging Trends”, he lists many examples of such efforts to coexist. Community-driven controlled vocabularies are one such example. LibraryThing employs this concept in it’s user-based cataloging (http://www.librarything.com/). In these cases, tag-equivalencies can be made and unmade by members. Once two tags are made equivalent, the more popular tag becomes the term that is used. Equivalencies can occur through spelling variations, such as “humor” and “humour”, or truncated variations, such as “world war 2” and “wwii” (Smith, 2008).

In the online store for handmade goods, Etsy, exists another fine example of user-made tags and controlled vocabulary; something called an “auto-manual folksonomy” (Smith, 2008, http://www.etsy.com/). When a merchant first sets up a page, in which he or she can sell their handmade items, the merchant can pick from a pre-defined list of describers to help potential customers find the items the merchant is selling. Users or shoppers on the site can then add their own tags to the merchandise. The result is a successful mix of both styles, with predetermined vocabulary acting as a heading, and user-based vocabularies acting as subheadings.

These are just two of the many examples already existing in our world. But there are also many theories that propose this alliance of taxonomies and folksonomies. Catalogers contributing to tagging, presenting controlled vocabularies in a recognizable format similar to current Internet trends, and taxonomy software that allows for tagging, are all existing schemes to combine taxonomies and folksonomies.

With the brainpower that exists in the library and information science community, I am excited and hopeful for what is to come. I look forward to the day when I see the Authority shake hands with the User, when their powers unite against the struggle that is the Catalog. As Sanders (2008) says, “Taxonomy vs. folksonomy is a false dichotomy.”


Wow, if this coexisting trend continues, maybe there’s hope for Berman and the LC after all.

Glossary—So many terms, so little time

       I have chosen the following definitions from Wikipedia because that site contained the most up-to-date and concise definitions I found. Hopefully, this glossary will help disambiguate the contents of this blog, especially to those unfamiliar with the library and information science field.

A folksonomy is a system of classification derived from the practice and method of collaboratively creating and managing tags to annotate and categorize content; this practice is also known as collaborative tagging, social classification, social indexing, and social tagging. Folksonomy is a portmanteau of folk and taxonomy. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folksonomy)

In online computer systems terminology, a tag is a non-hierarchical keyword or term assigned to a piece of information (such as an internet bookmark, digital image, or computer file). This kind of metadata helps describe an item and allows it to be found again by browsing or searching. Tags are generally chosen informally and personally by the item's creator or by its viewer, depending on the system. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tag_(metadata))

Taxonomy is the practice and science of classification. The word finds its roots in the Greek τάξις, taxis (meaning 'order', 'arrangement') and νόμος, nomos ('law' or 'science'). Taxonomy uses taxonomic units, known as taxa (singular taxon).

In addition, the word is also used as a count noun: a taxonomy, or taxonomic scheme, is a particular classification ("the taxonomy of ..."), arranged in a hierarchical structure. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxonomy)

In library and information science, authority control is the practice of creating and maintaining headings for bibliographic material in a catalog. Authority control fulfills two important functions. First, it enables catalogers to disambiguate items with similar or identical headings. For example, two authors who happen to have published under the same name can be distinguished from each other by adding middle initials, birth and/or death (or flourished, if these are unknown) dates, or a descriptive epithet to the heading of one (or both) authors. Second, authority control is used by catalogers to collocate materials that logically belong together, although they present themselves differently. For example, authority records are used to establish uniform titles, which can collocate all versions of a given work together even when they are issued under different titles. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authority_control)

A bibliographic or library database is a database of bibliographic records. It may be a database containing information about books and other materials held in a library (e.g. an online library catalog, or OPAC) or, as the term is more often used, an electronic index to journal or magazine articles, containing citations, abstracts and often either the full text of the articles indexed, or links to the full text. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibliographic_database)