LibraryThing

I've been very curious about LibraryThing, stumbling across links to it in various places, but hadn't quite got round to finding out exactly what it was. Overall, I think it's quite exciting and I do like the idea of it. I felt slightly geeky creating catalogue records for my own books, but I was impressed by how easy it was to use and I do like the social aspects behind it all. It's a great place to discover new books and find recommendations that correspond to your own interests and reading history. I also like the idea of the Local part of the site, as a way of finding out about talks and events (although at the moment I'm being told about events in Cambridge, MA-will have to sort that out!). I love seeing the book covers-it makes my list of books far more colourful and interesting.

My LibraryThing

I think there is great potential for libraries to use LibraryThing. I love the idea of using a LibraryThing widget to display new books on the library website. Currently I post up a list of new accessions every month to the website-it's usually quite long, but it'd be interesting to see whether a few titles across different subjects could be picked out and feature more prominently on the website via the LibraryThing widget. It'd certainly be nice to add some colour with the book cover images. It might also have potential use as a new addition to the website in connection with our special collections. For example we have a separate collection of books that are written by College alumni which we like to promote through special displays. It would be nice to generate wider knowledge and interest in these, and the LibraryThing format might work nicely for this, producing a list of the titles that would be easily viewable.

As for incorporating LibraryThing tags and recommendations into the library OPAC, I have mixed feelings. In an academic environment, students are given reading lists so are fairly focused in what they need to search for, so I'm not really sure how useful recommendations are. I suppose it could be of some use as a time-saving device if it suggests other books on a reading list, thus saving students the time of searching for it and they can just click on a link instead. It could also be useful for dissertations etc where students have more freedom in finding reading material because it might bring up titles that students wouldn't have searched for themselves. I like the fact that the LibraryThing widget could be integrated easily into the record display, but that it could also be clearly differentiated from the OPAC itself.

Again the tag issue arises. The tags people attach to their books are going to be very subjective, with lots of topic and genre descriptions that relate to the personal meaning that the individual got from the book. Maybe that does help generate more refined distinctions, and it certainly does make sense for the person building their library to draw connections and themes between their books that suits their needs, but how useful is it on an OPAC? The article LibraryThing and the Library Catalog was thoroughly interesting, but I'm still not entirely sure how much user-generated content can enhance the value of the OPAC. Maybe I just need to try it out a bit more to experience the benefits? I'm certainly keeping an open mind!

Delicious

I really like the look of Delicious. I have recently spent a lot of time organising and adding to my Favourites in my browser, and my list of favourite sites keeps growing quite dramatically. I have been concerned that should anything happen to my laptop, all of these would be lost and I'd have to start again from scratch (a rather daunting prospect). So the idea that my favourite sites could be accessed from anywhere is extremely appealing. I also like the fact that a website can be tagged with multiple subjects (I often have an internal debate about which folder to best save a site into under my Favourites!) I think it is also useful that you can see how many others have saved a site-by clicking on the numer of people you seem to be able to view a list of users who also saved that site, and then by looking at their pages you may be able to discover other related sites that could be of interest to you?

In terms of using Delicious from a library point of view, I think that it could be extremely useful for a Faculty library because a particular subject can be focused on. In a College library I am rather less sure what sites it would be useful to collect for students, perhaps general online tools and resources? It's great to hear that tag and link roll features could be added to a library webpage, making Delicious material easily accessible to users. I particularly like what Nashville Public Library have done with Delicious on their library website-creating a Delicious tag cloud of different topics that teenagers may like to find information on. This not only looks great, but is extremely accessible.

I will definitely be signing up to Delicious (yet another account to create, groan-but it seems just too good a tool to pass by)!

Tagging

I found Clay Shirky's essay very thought-provoking, particularly the idea that due to the absence of physical constraints in the digital world, classification of material on the web is freed from the types of organisational schemes we use in libraries. However, while a book's classification is limited to one subject and specific area due to the need to give a book one individual classmark, subject headings provide access points to books that recognise the various topics that are covered within. Yes, the vocabulary used in these subject headings are highly controlled, but it is this use of an authoritative vocabulary that facilitates a uniform standard. This has the affect of aiding access to and retrieval of material that is relevant to a users area of interest. Nevertheless, difficulties may arise where a user expresses a search term in vocabulary that is different to that used in a subject heading.

User tagging of digital content provides a much greater flexibility in the choice of vocabulary to classify material. It can therefore be much more personal and subjective. I largely agree with Shirky that the variety that is produced by this flexibility should not be seen as chaos, and that the different vocabularies used by people do indeed have subtle differences in meaning, such as the movies and cinema example. It allows for different view points and ideas to be represented and undoubtedly allows for a democratization of content by allowing users to specify what is of value to them. So long as tags aid retrieval, they are definitiely useful. It seems that more popular and frequntly used tags gain more importance, and as such a form of hierarchy is formed-I suppose this is good generally, but perhaps is not necessarily so in every case as it places greater value on more common terms/ideas?

I must admit I am not entirely sure about what to make of tagging. Overall I think it's good, and don't have much of a problem with it, but in the course of writing this blog I seem to have become rather more uncertain, and I apologise for the probable incoherent nature of this post! I'm not sure what to think of incorporating tags into library OPACs, maybe that would be useful? It's definitely a topic I will give more thought to, right now I need a break!