As someone who identifies as queer, and who only came to my identity later in life, partially due to internalized homophobia and partially due to lack of seeing part of my identity as a possibility, representation is of the utmost importance to me. It was only at the end of my undergraduate career when I started a blog on Tumblr and stumbled upon a page (via a random quote of all things!) that belonged to the queer community, did I come to become aware of a world outside of what I had known. Since then, I have viewed tagging as a method to reclaim spaces and rename ourselves. When I started reading about metadata, I immediately began to wonder how it can be used for better access. When first querying my library system’s catalog, there was a mismatch between the controlled vocabulary of the catalog and the terms that I had associated with the queer community. This leads me to believe that there were no texts in the local library system. While it has vastly improved in the past four years, I wonder if the same issue occurs in other communities and how it may be lessened with the use of tags. At the same time, I worried that it would replicate the biases of those who control it. In this learning journal, I hope to look at research articles that talk at length about tagging within the context of a library catalog. I want to see if this service is used within various libraries and if there seems to be an improvement in overall access, especially for folks whose voices have been traditionally silenced by the pre-existing system. I would also like to see if there is a distinguishable difference between the pre-existing catalog and the tags that users submit. Tagging feels like it would be a way for communities to have a voice for addressing topics that are about and relate to them instead of having the gaze of the majority define these topics and connections. It would be deeply interesting if there were repositories of community-driven vocabulary for libraries to inject into their library catalog. Admittedly, I feel like a thesis could probably be written about this topic, and I barely understand how metadata operates, but I do want to delve more into this topic.
The first text that I delved into was entitled “Tagging for Subject Access” (2012).The article considered 37 integrated library systems (ILSs) and 15 library-adjacent information retrieval searching tools (such as WorldCat Local). With the ILSs, the article further looked at which allowed for tagging and for how the tags operated within the search (whether they’d start new search or have the capability of narrowing a search). For each ILS it also considered whether the tags would be knowable to the user (in the form of a tag clouds or tag lists). I am very new to the world of librarianship, so I am unfamiliar with the majority of ILSs and was excited by the option. I also checked to see if my library used any of the listed ILSs and it does not. The catalog here is driven by Symphony and, from what I can see, does not allow for tagging. When it comes to considering whether libraries are using the tagging feature, the article mainly looks at the Koha ILS and compares the use of tagging in 307 libraries (school, public, and academic libraries). Interestingly, while academic libraries have a greater number of tag enabled catalogs, public libraries have a greater number of users contributing to the overall catalog (Yang, 2012). This is important when considering Rolla’s research where he says “the structure of tag clouds gives more weight to some user tags on the basis of the aggregation of multiple users’ tag. This is more useful for works with greater numbers of tags because inaccurate or misleading tags are less likely to come to the forefront than in records with few tags” (DeZelar-Tiedman, 2011).
The first text that I delved into was entitled “Tagging for Subject Access” (2012). The article considered 37 integrated library systems (ILSs) and 15 library-adjacent information retrieval searching tools (such as WorldCat Local). With the ILSs, the article further looked at which allowed for tagging and for how the tags operated within the search (whether they’d start a new search or have the capability of narrowing a search). For each ILS, it also considered whether the tags would be knowable to the user (in the form of tag clouds or tag lists). I am very new to the world of librarianship, so I am unfamiliar with the majority of ILSs and was excited by the option. I also checked to see if my library used any of the listed ILSs, and it does not. Symphony drives the catalog here and, from what I can see, does not allow for tagging. When it comes to considering whether libraries are using the tagging feature, the article mainly looks at the Koha ILS and compares the use of tagging in 307 libraries (school, public, and academic libraries).
References
DeZelar-Tiedman, C. (2011). Exploring user-contributed metadata’s potential to enhance access to literary works. Library Resources and Technical Services, 55 (4), 221-233. Retrieved from https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-84860126184&doi=10.5860%2flrts.55n4.221&partnerID=40&md5=8ed263cd72a666e256b92c96be06901b
Yang, S. Q. (2012). Tagging for Subject Access: A Glimpse into Current Practice by Vendors, Libraries, and Users. Computers in Libraries, 32(9), 19–23. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com.proxy2.library.illinois.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eric&AN=EJ999852
Basking in Books 