[Web4lib] del.icio.us tags and bookmarking sites -- WHY DO IT?

[Patricia F Anderson]

Whoa, whoa, whoa! Bill said:

On Mon, 23 May 2005, Drew, Bill wrote:
[snip]
> Adding that tagging to an opac makes sense to me but that is not NOW
> that is the future.  What is the current value now?  It looks like to me
> we are going to be adding another search engine to where their are
> already too many.  Why isn't Google doing this?

That argument heads in a perilous direction. 'Why doesn't everybody speak 
English -- we have too many languages as it is.' 'Why can't everybody 
learn from a classroom lecture -- a good student shouldn't need visual 
aids or hands-on.' I don't know. I like the way different languages shape 
the mind and thought in different ways and allow different perceptions of 
the world, leading to different insights and discoveries. People have 
different learning styles and different preferred sensory modalities and 
communication styles. Using different search engines for different tasks 
is something I see as a Good Thing. It is kind of like being married -- 
your spouse (perhaps Google) is your best friend, but you don't expect 
them to be all things at all times -- you have other friends, too.

I would NOT want Google to try to be all things to all people. I 
appreciate the dynamics of having various search engines all trying to 
find a niche, to something better than other folk. They learn from each 
other, each novelty enrichs the rest. Also, Google does adopt the most 
successful of these creative innovations from other search engines. 
Chances are very good that Google *will* at some point add this 
functionality, and may even be working on it as we speak. (I'd be 
surprised if they weren't.) This happens BECAUSE of diversity of tools and 
visions and insights into searching, not because all ideas are Google.

Last but not least, in my classes, I teach students to use the folksonomy 
tools for a particular special purpose, just as we use Amazon to find 
books, and IMDB for movie information. Match the tool to the task. I see 
the folksonomy tools being an excellent way to locate a special search 
engine or bookmark collection on a topic that is of new interest to you 
when you want to come up to speed quickly, and without wasting time 
sorting for quality links. I also use Teoma for the same purpose.

Just my two cents worth.

Patricia Anderson, pfa at umich.edu