taxonomies and folksonomies

defraggingtaxonomies and

folksonomies

Karen G. SchneiderCollege Center for Library

AutomationTallahassee, Florida

Circ, Holdings, FTE

0

200,000

400,000

600,000

800,000

1,000,000

1,200,000

1,400,000

1,600,000

Circulation 1,243,447 1,330,906 1,380,000 1,080,000 1,098,983 1,293,864 1,451,417 1,400,000 1,388,342 1,301,582

Holdings 968,268 998,446 1,029,515 1,086,402 1,116,642 1,146,127 1,210,127

FTEs 238,348 236,256 234,962 235,527 244,558 267,486 285,128 297,795 294,818 287,714

FY9697 FY9798 FY9899 FY9900 FY0001 FY0102 FY0203 FY0304 FY0405 FY0506

library use: and/and/and

a brief history of library automation

“disconnected data silos with non-usable content”

worldcat: 1 billion records

learning from taxonomies

classic problems inauthority control

spell-checkstemmingsynonymsphrases

anachronisms

disambiguation

expertise can be efficient

topic depth (faceting/subdivisions)

lessons from folksonomies

don’t scare off your workforce

in the short term,satisficing trumps

perfecting

In 2006, 400 catalogers at the Library of Congress

cataloged 350,000 “volumes.”

That’s 1,400 records per workday, or 3.5 records

per person, per day.

Tagging is about (re)discovery and (re)use,

not (just) description

Tagging is about building data, not records

folksonomies grow good metadata

90% of Flickr content falls into 6 different types of

facets:

place (40% of tags), events, dates, people,

things/animals, color

some basic rules about cataloging appear

instinctive

Useless critiques of folksonomies

problems commonto taxonomies and

folksonomies

tags * time = crud

scalability (onesies vs. noise)

uber-folksonomies

wikipedia

Librarything for Libraries

librarythingltfl

Librarians’ Internet Index

lii.org

librarians’delicious collections

CanadianAssumption College

California Law

incentivizing uberization:

handprints and mirrors

AIM/email: kgs@freerangelibrarian.com

twitter: kgsfacebook: K.G. Schneider

doppler: freerangelibrarianblog: freerangelibrarian.com

WorldCat Identity: http://orlabs.oclc.org/Identities/lccn-

n95-110807