1. What if the users decided where
the books should go?
Folksonomies and the de-professionalization of metadata creation
Edward Bilodeau
Centre for Continuing Education
McGill University
Objectives
• Introduction to folksonomies
• Overview of common tools
• Relationship of folksonomies to taxonomies and LIS
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2. Background
• New tools are launched (~2004)
Flickr (photos)
Del.icio.us (bookmarks)
• These tools allow users to add their own descriptors
(i.e. tags) to items they have posted
• These tags are shared (public)
Flickr
http://www.flickr.com/
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3. 3

4. 4

5. 5

6. 6

7. 7

8. del.icio.us
http://del.icio.us/
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9. 9

10. 10

11. 11

12. 12

13. Emergent Behavior
• People were creating their own ad-hoc classification
systems
using their own words
• People were using these classification systems
To retrieve their own items (i.e. photos, bookmarks)
To retrieve items posted by others
To discover new items
To find people with similar interests
What do we call it?
• August 2004: Discussion on IIA mailing list regarding
“social classification”
• Thomas Vander Wal: folksonomy
~ Metadata that is created by users, primarily through “tagging”
• Seen as an alternative to top-down taxonomies
taxonomies are difficult and expensive to create, maintain, and
use
folksonomies are easy, inexpensive and meaningful to users
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14. taxonomy librarian
concepts, ideas, words
creator
taxonomy
classification scheme
etc…
resource
users
concepts, ideas, words
taxonomy librarian
concepts, ideas, words
creator
taxonomy
classification scheme
etc…
s
ap
resource
m
users
concepts, ideas, words
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15. taxonomy librarian
concepts, ideas, words
creator
taxonomy
classification scheme
etc…
resource
maps
users
concepts, ideas, words
folksonomy librarian
concepts, ideas, words
creator
tag-space
resource
users
concepts, ideas, words
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16. folksonomy librarian
!?!?!?!
concepts, ideas, words
creator
tag-space
resource
users
concepts, ideas, words
Del.icio.us Demo
• Jon Udell, Infoworld
The ability for users to share tags is critical
Provides users with feedback, opportunity to adjust their tagging to
current use
• Demo:
http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/gems/delicious.html
Local vs Global tags (“buckets”)
Locating other users
Tag cleanup
Tag normalization
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17. Problems
• Ambiguity
Lack of shared understanding and/or lack of shared vocabulary for
describing shared understanding
Single tag insufficient for describing item
• Synonyms
• Handling multi-word tags
web development, webdevelopment, web-development
webdev, wdev, wd
• Tag spam
• Coverage is based on use (good or bad?)
(Tentative) Prediction
• Folksonomies are based on social network consisting of
“all people using the tool”
Currently early adopters
Relatively small numbers
Potential of shared understanding and meaning
Enable system to provide value (retrieval and discovery)
As numbers of user increase,
Discovery value may continue to increase
Retrieval value will decrease, as necessary shared
understanding dissolves
Tools will need a way to provide users to define social groups
smaller then “all users”
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18. Relevance to LIS
• Interesting to study how users categorize resources
• Potential to become another way people access
information
• Provides some benefits at much less cost (compared to
formal process)
• Seen as a compliment to formal taxonomy/classification
• Still very cutting edge
Tools are limited/immature (from a folksonomy POV!)
Early adopters (i.e. tech deviants)
Resources
• Del.icio.us
http://del.icio.us/tag/folksonomy
• Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folksonomy
• Adam Mathes (2004) Folksonomies - Cooperative Classification and
Communication Through Shared Metadata
http://www.adammathes.com/academic/computer-mediated-
communication/folksonomies.html
• Slides from the IA Summit folksonomy panel
http://atomiq.org/archives/2005/03/ia_summit_folksonomies_panel.html
• Tools
Delicious: http://www.flickr.com/
Flickr: http://del.icio.us/
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19. Homework
• Do your readings
• Create accounts and try out the tools
• Think about how you could use this technology within the
context of a library or information service to improve
access to your collection
Thank you.
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