“Folksonomy, a
free-form tagging, is a user-generated classification system of web contents
that allows users to tag their favorite web resources with their chosen words
or phrases selected from natural language.” (Noruzi, 2006) I believe this is
something that I am doing already, it is just that this is a formal definition
of what is going on. I am thinking this is similar to what I do when I give a
subject name to a website that I am bookmarking. I have just started to use
Diigo, so I am learning about that aspect of social bookmarking. Noruzi states,
“The purpose of this study is to provide an overview of the folksonomy tagging phenomenon
(also called social tagging and social bookmarking) and explore some of the reasons
why we need controlled vocabularies, discussing the problems associated with folksonomy”
(Noruzi, 2006)
After reading more of Noruzi’s article, I learned that I can
browse other websites that other people have bookmarked within the system. I
notice that Diigo is not on the list of most popular folksonomy-based systems,
but I am guessing that Diigo is newer than 2006 when this article was written.
I recognize some other systems, but did not realize they fell under the same
umbrella as folksonomy.
One of the main advantages of bookmarking that I enjoy is
that it keeps track of all my favourite sites, and I can name them as I wish on
my computer. One thing that social bookmarking can do, that I just learned, is that
for one, it is stored online so I can access it anywhere, not just from my
computer, but that I can find out what other people are bookmarking in relation
to the same site I have bookmarked. One
thing I have noticed though, is that the key aspect for making my OWN tags, is
that it needs to make sense to ME. What someone else chooses as a subject
heading may not fit for me. Usually when I am bookmarking a site, it is for my
own benefit so that I can access it again. The idea of shared bookmarks is
great so that I can have access to other websites related to the same topic, so
I can see where a standard for tagging would need to be established. However,
like I said, one persons bookmark under a specific subject tag may not be what
I had in mind.
I realized this even more when we were asked, as part of
this week’s lesson to explore another social bookmarking site – Delicious:
I decided to look up information about diabetes (my mom has
Type 1). I first searched Diabetes on Google, and had 280 million results! When
trying to bookmark a site I liked using Delicious, some of the tags that came
up as other “Suggested Tags” were: sintomas, prevencion, riesgo, medicine,
medicina, Biology 20, Diabetes, symptoms, disease, system:unfiled. I am not
familiar with most of these terms! A different language?
When I narrowed the Google search to Type 1 diabetes, it
reduced it to 66 million – still a lot. When I bookmarked a site with Delicious
(Canadian Diabetic Association), there were no suggested tags – I thought for
sure there would be a lot of people who had already bookmarked this site.
So then I Googled Treatment for Type 1 Diabetes, and I had
38 million results. Once again, no “Suggested Tags” for the site I chose to
bookmark.
So now I did a search within Delicious. When I searched
Diabetes, I got 70 215 results. Certainly much more refined than 280 million!
The site I saved with this search had only been saved 18 times. The top
bookmarked site (1476 saves) was interesting… “Natural compound helps reverse
diabetes in mice” (medicalxpress.com) Not sure how reputable the site is, but I’m
skeptical -the name may be a hint!) Some other “related tags” for Diabetes in
Delicious that were listed that seemed curious to me were: dietetica, linkroll,
my, sitting. Ones that made more sense TO ME were: bloodsugar101,
patient_support, monitoring. Obviously these other “curious” tags for me possibly
meant something to someone else. Or, if anyone can make up any tag, they can
come up with silly, nonsense tags.
My next search in Delicious, Type 1 Diabetes, had 1741
results. My link was only bookmarked by me (Canadian Diabetic Association) -I
was disappointed. I didn’t really see anything out of the ordinary. The top
site had 217 saves (dlife.com) and the next, a site for finding diabetic
recipes (124 saves).
Last search, treatment for Type 1 Diabetes yielded 122
results. Once again, my link was only bookmarked by me. This is where the
“Related Tags” got sketchy! Porn, XXX, teen nonnude galleries bikini, it goes
on…
So I am not overly impressed with Delicious. Fun maybe for
seeing what other people have tagged, but I don’t see myself using it for
important research, or as a Teacher Librarian, unless there is more control
over the headings that are being used for specific subjects.
Work Cited: Noruzi, A. (2006). Folksonomies: (Un)Controlled
Vocabulary? Knowledge Organization,
33(4), 199-203.
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