Social cataloguing

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Contents

Introduction

See also LIBR559M Wiki entries - October 2009, LibraryThing, Social bookmarking sites and Social media landscape

...[social cataloguing] allow(s) members to not only share publicly their cataloged
inventories, but to post reviews and commentaries on the items posted, create and
participate in discussion groups, and tag or classify the items cataloged. In other words,
these sites serve as a user-designed, interactive, and shared catalog. (Spiteri, 2009)



The purpose of this entry is to provide an overview to social cataloguing for student librarians in LIBR559M.

What is social cataloguing? Social cataloguing refers to web-based applications that help users to tag and track books and other materials in their own e-inventory or filing system. Social cataloguing sites (SCSs) make it possible to discuss books and review them while being social online. Like delicious and Slideshare, SCSs also facilitate "social discovery" and searching by including hyperlinked tags (or user-determined descriptors), rating systems and comment features.

Attributes and features

Several attributes of SCSs are worth mentioning for librarians:

  • afford ability to share book titles, reviews and comments (like a bookclub) with readers from around the world
  • allow social features to be linked to bibliographic records as a way to build user communities
  • of interest because they are rich stores of information and metadata

For librarians looking to encourage participation in their communities, social cataloguing may be a useful way to do some creative digital outreach while engaging within a worldwide network. There is some debate, however, about the value of adding social cataloguing features to traditional catalogues and bibliographic records. Some suggest that SCSs can enhance the library catalogue by encouraging end-users to tag (and browse) items even though some express concern that user-generated content may lead users astray.

Taking a broader view, user-applied tags and tag clouds may provide fringe benefits beyond being social with other readers and the phenomenon of serendipitous discovery of books. One idea worth thinking about is the notion that tags form a semantic bridge between natural language terms and controlled vocabularies, thereby enhancing the information literacy skills of participants. Cho and Giustini[1] suggest that tagging features may be a key in building the semantic web and turning the web into a massive searchable online catalogue.

Social cataloguing websites

The range and number of SCSs is increasing all the time. However, we would like to present a list of the most popular tools initially for exploration:

Notable SCSs

Growing in popularity

Feel free to add any new or emerging social cataloguing sites that have not been listed below:

Criticism

SCSs have been evaluated by librarians and the following are some of the most-commonly mentioned problems:

  • No standardization: the openness of social cataloguing creates problems during information retrieval due to variant spellings of tags as well as semantic and linguistic ambiguity (imprecision).
  • No hierarchies: tags are created in isolation and illustrate no inter-relationships between terms. In controlled vocabularies, a "Dog" could be a "Hound" or a "Basset Hound". These terms should be linked in descending order so users can co-locate resources. In tagging, tags lies "flat" in the folksonomy; users create and or apply broader or narrower tags to achieve the same hierarchical structure.
  • Use of plural and singular forms: does the vocabulary use "Dog" or "Dogs"? In a tagging system, you will have to search plurals and singular forms.
  • Unorthodox terms and spelling: freedom of language introduces inconsistent usage, new "languages" and spelling thereby complicating subject cataloguing and co-location of similar items.
  • Synonyms: two terms that express the same concept. Controlled vocabularies have "authority files" which dictate a preferred way of expressing concepts, such as "TV" or "Television." In folksonomic environments, there is no such control over synonomous terms.
  • Polysemy: conceptual ambiguity around a term. A "window", for example, could refer to an opening in a wall, or something broader like the "window of opportunity". Without conceptual control, terms can produce all kinds of problems during retrieval.
  • Malicious intent: user opinions are likely to invade a folksonomy if there are strong feelings involved with subjects. Tags can be moderated for particularly harmful content, but that takes valuable time and human resources.

OPAC 2.0 - Next Generation Catalogue?

In 2006, during a period of fervent interest in the Library 2.0 concept, there was some debate about embedding social features in OPACs. Pockets of innovation began to appear but broader adoption of principles have been slow to come. Studies comparing "social" tag-based folksonomies with standard subject indexing in OPACs raise several issues of concern but do not provide sufficient direction to librarians. Some librarians say that folksonomies are unable to replace the profession's well-established controlled vocabularies. Others believe that tagging may help to change attitudes toward library OPACs thereby making them (according to LibraryThing founder Tim Spalding) "more fun."

The impulse to improve library catalogues has also led to Scriblio (formerly WPopac) which operates on the Wordpress.org blogging platform. The open source OPAC is capable of managing web content as well as traditional materials. A similar project that permits tagging, rating and reviewing is SOPAC - the social OPAC - which has installations in at least three public libraries.

One product that has stirred interest in aggregating content for libraries is LibGuides which can be used to create customizable resource guides along disciplinary lines. These dynamic guides integrate web 2.0 tools to "distribute library content and services beyond the library website, and connect with patrons wherever they are." Although not meant to disseminate catalogue content exclusively, they are unique in their combination of folksonomic freedom at the local level and linking to web content at the global level. (For a list of libraries using libguides, see here.)

In 2009, the idea of a new generation OPAC is catching on in Canada. Look at the Edmonton Public Library catalogue and the "Primo" version of UBC Library's catalogue. In the United States, PennTags at the UPenn Library is an interesting project which allows users to markup records with tags.

Conclusion

As the volume of born-digital materials increases on the web, there is a need to find better ways to create metadata for knowledge objects (i.e. books, audiovisual materials and web media). Sites such as LibraryThing and WorldCat exemplify how the principles of web 2.0 (i.e. tagging, rating systems and making comments) can successfully be applied to library catalogues without compromising data integrity.

The future of automated metadata extraction from library databases should include culling data from social media sites such as SCSs. Even though SCSs have been around for some time they are now gaining interest and even acceptance from librarians and other information professionals.

References
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