Bookmarking: An Old Title for a New Technology

del.icio.us certainly lives up to its name. The site is a very powerful tool for organizing and finding resources on the web. One does not always have to retrace the fingersteps of those seeking the same or similar information which I need or want. The tags and the various means of manipulating them allows one to share the discoveries of others and to make one’s own contributions. The open form of the tagging system allows everyone to offer their insights into the utility and essence of sites. The tagging system’s straightforwardness and flexibility encourages a high degree of participation. As is abundantly clear, it would be impossible for any single entity to manage the knowledge and organization of the infinite web. Taking advantage of the generosity of the web community as a sort of extended staff is obvious and necessary. When the library’s constituents contribute tags as their own knowledge, expertise, and experience to a library’s resources, they are engaging directly with the library and establish and/or deepen their commitment to the library through a two-way partnership. I will use del.icio.us to structure my explorations of the web.

As an adult services librarian, I would utilize the site to set up subject/research guides that patrons could subscribe to as feeds; establish web navigation paths; readers’ advisories alerts; supplementary notices for events and activities that tie in with programming. It could be a very useful means of creating and extending a client connection with patrons and researchers by demonstrating that the initial reference interaction does not end with the person leaving the library or my sending the email with the information they sought. For all of these activities, I would ask that patrons add their own tags to enhance their discoverability and the richness of the library’s resources.

I used LibraryThing on a small volunteer project for an organization that wanted to create a database or list of their small book collection. It took me just a short period of time to create the catalog for their library. I emailed them with information on how to use the catalog on the site and also exported and emailed them an Excel file of the catalog. These resources met their needs. I had started by using WorldCat but soon realized that LibraryThing was a much easier and effective route. The readers’ advisory features of LibraryThing are extremely helpful. As an adult services librarian, patrons ask for specific kinds of suggestions for books on which traditional advisory resources are not focused although some like the online resource NoveList do address them to a great extent. Patrons request titles that are like their favorites or other books they have enjoyed or been moved by or titles that are similar in style to such and such a work. The LibraryThing features are really effective in these and other respects. As I searched through LibraryThing, I sensed a similar situation with traditional library catalogs related to editions, reissues, reprints, versions, and other manifestations of the same title, and variant records for them. I understand FRBR is intended to address that.

Flickr is very cool. I really liked the mapping functions, for example pinpointing the location where a photograph was taken. These are the types of information which patrons request. As the examples show, the site is a very effective and fun way to promote and show off the library and its activities. The tagging on Flickr and these other sites are so appealing and productive because they are in the language people use and which we can basically share. The terms drill down into the details of a resource to a depth which traditional library subject cataloging, especially for books, does not. Of course, there are very important exceptions, such as The Thesaurus for Graphic Materials. The situation is akin to the relationship between indexing and cataloging. This and other library subject access systems, such as LCSH, are collaborative to a certain degree, as librarians can make recommendations and voice their opinions to the bodies that govern them, and they have become more responsive to the library community and receptive to facilitating change and updating. Of course, they cannot work in the same way as user-generated taxonomies. People want to exchange ideas, reviews, interpretations, viewpoints, and social bookmarking and tagging systems are very powerful means of communication.