Taxonomies to Tags, Part 2
In the previous post I suggested that people who work with ANZLIC metadata may be interested in the discussion on tagging, but I didn’t mention why. A “tag” is a keyword that means something to the person publishing a resource, and which is attached to that resource to enable discovery.
Well known sites that use tags, like del.iciuo.us and Flickr, have some similarities to ANZLIC metadata collections:
- They are collection of resources – bookmarks and photos respectivly.
- Their content is created by a diverse community of users, rather than a centralised group of specialists.
They also differ in significant ways:
- ANZLIC records are classified using a fixed set of Search Words and qualifiers, whereas the tags applied to the bookmarks on del.icio.us and photos on Flickr are created by the person who adds the resource to the collection.
- Collections that rely on tagging do not have to spend any time creating taxonomies attempt to be universal (but they can still identify related resources).
- Taxonomies define subject areas up front, whereas tagging allows those subject areas to form as time goes on. It’s central control vs the wisdom of the crowd.
When tags are used taxonomies and thesauri can still provide plenty of value by providing relationships between tags (parent/child and siblings), and synonyms. The difference is that they move into the background and become enabling devices rather than in your face tools that users have to deals with.