Given the nature of today’s
information focused and technologically based society, it is expected that
folksonomies would feature prominently in many aspects of the field of information
science. Folksonomies have become popular in many familiar places on the Web,
including, but not limited to, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest.
Social tagging is also beginning to be implemented on various library catalogs
(Peterson, 2008).
Folksonomies enable users to assign
their own subject oriented tags for whatever video, post, photo, or other
digital file, and then have the ability to retrieve information from searching
these and others’ created tags. They allow for the potential of more access
points in information retrieval and the fact that they are beginning to be used
in library catalogs emphasizes their potential usefulness when thinking of
other collections. However, there is a reason that folksonomies haven’t taken
over in other areas; their very structure goes against the nature of
traditional catalog indexing using controlled vocabularies (Menard &
Smithglass, 2012; Peterson, 2008). There are many aspects of user-generated tagging that
make it challenging to implement.
The present challenge comes in
obeying traditional cataloging rules, while also making index terms engaging to
current users. Users today expect interaction on the web, because of the
culture of social networking, and social tagging fulfills this need (Peterson,
2008). Controlled vocabularies remain the primary indexing technique because of
the weaknesses associated with folksonomies, such as their lack of specificity
and lack of control over the terms (Noruzi, 2006). However, with the right
techniques and developments, folksonomies could be helpful with visual
materials in institutional collections, as they could help reach a broader
audience (Beaudoin, 2007).
There are various digital
collections that have made some attempts at implementing social tagging, most notably, Flickr. The hierarchical tagging technique has been
implemented quite successfully with Flickr, allowing relationships to be
captured between the different levels of the subject terms (Plangprasopchock
& Lerman, 2009). Flickr tags appear to utilize a wider range of index terms
than might be suspected. One study, looking at the Library of Congress stream
on Flickr, compared the tags to terms using the controlled vocabularies of the Thesaurus
for Graphic Materials and Library of Congress Subject Headings. The comparison
suggested that extending LCSH and TGM to incorporate user generated terms, such
as those used by Flickr users, will make these vocabularies more accessible to
a wider user base (Stivilia & Joergensen, 2010). Social tags on Flickr have
shown success in some ways, but it remains to be seen if they really can, or
should, replace traditional controlled vocabulary terms.
Using the two as complements to one other can help increase the information known and make the collections richer by
gaining general knowledge about the collection from the user tags. However, although
user tags may help to identify people and places, they don’t appear to improve
retrieval of images (Menard & Smithglass, 2012). Yet, as the tags appear to
increase public knowledge and interactions to improve tags, in this way they are
improving the quality and quantity of the metadata surrounding the images.
There are a number of online
photographic collection projects that have attempted to implement the use of
social tagging techniques, as Flickr has done. The CoDesPho Project
(Collaboration for the Description of Photographs) was started in Belgium and centered
on a collection of digitized photographs from 1890-1960. The premise was to
allow users to enter comments about the images in order to increase the
available metadata. Of course, these comments would need to be screened
carefully by an expert reviewer in order to eliminate those that were not
helpful. This project determined that there was a strong correlation between
the comments and enriched metadata, suggesting that the user added comments did
help fill an information need (Durieux, 2010). Unfortunately, this project was
discontinued in 2007, for reasons that were not discussed, but it seems likely
that the time commitment to screening the comments might be one reason.
The National Archives of the
Netherlands launched a similar project in 2004, using a digital collection of
500,000 images. Like the CoDesPho project, this collaboration also included a
free text comment form that would be screened by expert reviewers and the user
comments were evaluated based on their relevance towards user queries. The
comments were found to add significantly meaningful, specific, non-abstract
terms to the existing metadata for the images (Van Hool, 2006). Similarly, the
Picture Australia project collaborated with universities, city libraries, and
museums to use a technique that would combine traditional cataloging with
social tagging. The images were described using traditional cataloging methods,
but were also added to a Flickr stream, where general users were encouraged to
add more images, as well as assign subject tags. This project successfully uses
traditional methods to satisfy cataloging, but also recognizes the importance
of user interaction to add to the digital collection (Peterson, 2008).
Naturally, the integration of social
tagging with traditional cataloging is not a seamless process; there are many
challenges that still exist. Some professionals in the field of information and
library science even maintain that it is not possible to incorporate the two
because they are two distinct terms and serve two different purposes (Peterson,
2008). Others are less dismissive, but still skeptical, maintaining that there is
still a fundamental difference between the two because of different underlying
structures (Rorissa, 2010). Tags are assigned freely and without restrictions
on quantity, while indexers are required to minimize the number assigned; tags
are made within some sort of personal context, while indexers create subject
terms after a thorough examination of context, leading to higher retrieval
rates.
The most challenging barrier to
implementation of social tagging seems to be the lack of a controlled
vocabulary and Noruzi (2006) lays out the four main problems behind this:
polysemy, synonym, plurals, and depth/specificity. Polysemy (words with two or
more meanings), synonymy, discrepancies using plurals, and the level of depth/specificity
of the terms all lead to inconsistences with the socially tagged terms, all of
which can lead to inaccurate retrievals or low retrievals rates (Menard &
Smithglass, 2012; Noruzi, 2006). Another challenge to overcome has to do with
the language that the indexers use compared to the language of the social tags
made by the user. As alluded to previously, both of these groups describe image
content in such different ways, as they have a different framework in mind in
approaching the subject terms and/or tags (Stewart, 2013). However, it seems
likely that these challenges can be overcome with greater understanding of user
expectations and the language of the current user.
The most likely solution seems to be
double indexing, or combining the use
of traditional cataloging with socially generated tags. This could mean a
higher cost because of the time, energy, and resources needed to implement
this, which ultimately is not helpful in increasing access and leads to many
professionals being wary of its implementation (Menard & Smithglass, 2012).
However, some solutions exist for decreasing the problems associated with
social tagging, making it a more feasible solution. Flickr has adopted such
developments; 1) an automatic ingest of information when images are uploaded,
in order to reduce the likelihood of human error, and 2) using a schema to
prompt the user to choose the “correct” tag from an expert created thesaurus of
controlled terms, as a form of guided tagging (Beaudoin, 2007). Also, Noruzi (2006)
has suggested coming up with a singular/plural tool that would seek to
accommodate any form of the tag selected, decreasing the chance of terms being
overlooked in retrieval because of the tag being only singular or only plural. Further,
many studies have found the implementation of the collaboration of cataloging
with social tagging to be worth the time and energy needed for its upkeep
(Plangprasopchok & Lerman, 2009; Peterson, 2008; Rorissa, 2010; Stivilia
& Joergensen, 2010; Van Hool, 2006).
As social tagging is a relatively
new development, especially in the world of digital photographic collections,
it appears that there is still a lot of murkiness regarding the effectiveness
of combining it with traditional cataloging. Some information professionals
argue that it is cost-effective and worth the time and resources required,
while others argue that it is not and that it is not feasible to combine the two
because of their different forms and functions. This ongoing development also
leaves a lot of questions unanswered: Where do we draw the line between
user-generated metadata as added value, or as expressing a biased view that
devalues the information professionals authority as expert? How will these
“social tags” be successfully incorporated into existing metadata and do they
have the potential to accurately retrieve results? It’s clear that more
research about and more exposure to social tagging is needed to help bridge the
gap between index terms, understanding users search language, and figuring out
how best to implement tags.
Works Cited
Beaudoin, J. (2007). Flickr image
tagging: Patterns made visible. Bulletin
of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 34(1),
26-29.
Durieux, V. (2010). Collaborative
classification of digital photographs: The CoDesPho project. Unpublished.
Menard, E. & Smithglass, M. (2012).
Digital image description: A review of best practices in cultural institutions,
Library Hi Tech, 30(2), 291-309.
Noruzi, A. (2006). Folksonomies:
(Un)controlled vocabulary? Knowledge
Organization, 33(4), 199-203.
Peterson, E. (2008). The coexistence of
subject cataloging and folksonomy. Library
Philosophy and Practice (e-journal), April.
Plangprasopchok, A. & Lerman, K.
(2009). Constructing folksonomies from user-specified relations on Flickr. Proceedings of the 18th international conference
on World wide web, 781-790.
Rorissa, A. (2010). A comparative study
of Flickr tags and index terms in a general image collection. Journal of the American Society for
Information Science and Technology, 61(11), 2230-2242.
Stewart, B.
(2013). Pictures in words: Indexing, folksonomy, and representation of subject
content in historic photographs. Retrieved
from http://ro.ecu.edu/asu/theses/687.
Stivilia, B.
& Joergensen, C. (2010). Member activities and quality of tags in a
collection of historical photographs in Flickr. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology,
61(12), 2477-2489.
Van Hool, S. (2006). From spectator to
annotator: Possibilities offered by user-generated metadata for digital
cultural heritage collections.
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