[WEB4LIB] library websites and folksonomies

[Ross Singer]

Steve,

At Georgia Tech we are toying with this.  We are trying to create
an alternative interface to the OPAC (exporting all the bib
records as marcxml - most likely to be transformed to MODS) and
trying to create a natual language search on top of it.  Included
in this would be folksonomic tagging (as well as authoritative
LCSH) which could be included in the search (but possibly weighted
less than authoritative taxonomies - that will be worked out
later).  Once enough items have been tagged, we will have the
ability to map between folksonomic and LCSH (hopefully) so a user
could conceivably (using WAG the Dog or some other form) move back
and forth between folksonomic interfaces (del.icio.us, Furl,
Flickr. unalog - although possibly more likely CiteULike and
Connotea) and the OPAC and local resources.

I figure that by allowing users to save certain items and searches
with their own taxonomies, they will also be (inadverdently)
opening up the catalog to other discovery methods.  Win win,
really.

The net can be cast even wider by utilizing this with some sort of
metasearch.

-Ross.

On Mon, April 4, 2005 7:15 pm, Steve McCann said:
> I'm curious if anyone is thinking about incorporating some type of
> folksonomy [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folksonomy ] or other
> type
> of social software into their libraries' website or, dare I say,
> OPAC?
>
> There's an interesting podcast at IT Discussions by Clay Shirky of
> NYU, who is advocating moving in this direction.
> http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail470.html
>
> Some of the assertions presented:
> - Ontologies are a 300 year old hack, a shelf-based paradigm.
> - Ontologies may be on the wrong side of the "Does the world make
> sense or do we make sense of the world?" question.
> - and others
>
> My impression is that implementations such as http://del.icio.us/
> are
> fascinating, but not really that useful over the long-term since
> terms
> are not static and can't be analyzed over time. Since Google's
> page
> rank algorithms are essentially "social" and very successful,
> there
> may be something to the idea of adopting a social-software
> approach in
> some way. Maybe a citation analysis algorithm which queries an
> organization's institutional repository? Any thoughts are
> appreciated.
> --
>
> Steve McCann
>
> Digital Projects Librarian
> Mansfield Library
> The University of Montana
> steve.mccann at umontana.edu
> "permanently beta"
>
>
>



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