Social Intelligence

I wish to thank Tim Spalding’s What is Social Tagging? video for a little side trip to New Zealand. Watching this video reminded me of the power of other speakers I have heard at professional conferences and made me curious about using LibraryThing to locate some titles and information about New Zealand. I found reference to other titles by Keri Hulme who wrote The Bone People that I had read years ago. I now have other titles to read from an author I had always thought to be a one hit wonder. Now the trick will be finding copies of the suggest works in a library in Canada.

I loved the idea of using this site to catalogue the works in small libraries which can not afford library software or a full time, fully train librarian or library technician. It would be great for these little libraries to be able to share their collections and have a record of what they have for interest and insurance purposes. There is a large number of small collections that may never be known to anyone outside the institution that has the holdings.

Sam H. Korne seems to be giving folksonomies credibility by studying them for hierarchical structure which is one of the complaints about them from traditionalists. By giving folksonomies and by extension social cataloguing legitimacy these guys are allowing people who might not have used them otherwise to find reasons to join the social tagging community.

Folksonomies and tagging are relatively new concepts for me, but concepts with potential to make my work and research extremely interesting in the coming years. I do a good bit of exploring on the internet whether I am doing my own research for school, looking for information for someone else or just browsing the internet. I think that  bookmarking websites and sharing them with others could become a hobby that continues through out my life. Often  when I hear a new term or meet someone from elsewhere one of the first things I do is to Google the term or location to learn more about it to add to my knowledge base and make sure I understand it in the context of my own experience.

Tagging is the way that people are now making sense of the world around them and making sure that they remember the websites, blogs, books, music, etc.  they might want to go back to at a later date. Social bookmarking sites and tagging in library catalogs enlarge the amount of information that is being digested by these individuals. If people add their own terms to those currently existing they will be able to find these items of interest in the future and in some cases find other items of interest that someone else has tagged with the same term. They will adding to their personal library and knowledge base as well as potentially sharing new resources with others who also enjoy the topic.

Interest groups develop as result of social tagging when people realize that they share an interest in multiple websites or articles. They can then share ideas and information that the other people might not have as well as solve problems and come up with new web content or programs. People with particular interests  are motivated to keep up with the latest news and changes in these areas and so are able to provide information to others with similar interests. Interest groups can act as a panel of experts validating new knowledge, recognizing fakes and forgeries as well as providing constructive criticism and input for ongoing research.

Folksonomies and the other changes being made to library catalogs are exciting in that they have the potential for making the vast knowledge base of the internet sortable on some scale and creating greater access to traditional resources. The idea is that the terminology developed by users is added to that chosen by cataloguers resulting in a library catalog that is a portal instead of a wall to a larger majority of library users. I am sure many others have read a great book or watched a movie and then wanted to read or see something else only to discover that further works by this person are unavailable.  Having a wider selection of search terminology available would aid in making a secondary selection and as a cataloguer I have no difficulty recognizing the frailties of the traditional catalog.

 LibraryThing for Libraries and Bibliocommons provide extra information from the knowledge bases of the users and other librarians. Information on topics like series and other editions as well as the wealth of material from other countries. Social cataloguers are creating amazing resources that we as librarians can not dismiss whether we add the content directly to our catalogs and websites or whether we just let people know what is out there in the virtual realm.

I think I am throughly addicted to social bookmarking and tagging of new websites. I initially signed in to Delicious to complete my assignment, but then got side tracked searching for various related topics. I was amazed at how easily time slipped away while exploring  this site. I found material on babyboomers, seniors, and social networking for my final project. Then I looked to see what variety there was in social networking sites and from there I checked out a variety of sites for volunteering and home stay holidays.
Eventually I looked at all the sites tagged with LIS9763 and realized that I might have got off track with my tags as I concentrated on social software, but I had not always linked to sites that described library applications for social software. After exploring the sites tagged with LIS9763 I  went back and changed some of my tagging and went looking for more library related sites that also applied to our class.

Today for the first time I communicated with one of my colleagues outside library school on a wiki. I am trying to broaden my horizons, but it is easy to get off track and wander into unrelated topics.  I believe this sort of exploring  needs to be quickly added to the “favourite file” then I must redirect for the sake of timing.

I feel that social bookmarking has a lot of value for researchers and reference librarians as part of the search has been completed already. Being able to keep bookmarks on the web means that no matter what computer I log into I will be able to access them as long as I have an internet connection.

I like the idea of importing links directly into a blog from a social bookmarking site, but have not tried it yet. I have been reading Meredith G. Farkas’ book, Social Software in Libraries: Building Collaboration, Communication and Community Online this week.   It sounds like some of the other social bookmarking sites have interesting applications that allow you to track a site’s viability so that your links do not die when you go back to them at a later date or at least you are notified if they require updating. It was also mentioned that one could set up rss feeds for particular tags so that when new sites were tagged you would be notified.

The reality is that like any technology, social bookmarking sites are not completely foolproof and just as cataloguers  can come up with different tags for the same item so can anyone else.  When “see also records” work well they can redirect a searcher using a redundant term to an alternative, but the reality is that you often end up either getting no results or limited results if you enter the wrong term into a library catalogue or database. I am not convinced this is a problem only common to social taggers.

After reading various prospectives on web 2.0 technology and transparency of business and marketing objectives, I started to wonder how far we as a society have really come in creating transparent, user friendly environments that promote access and collaboration. I would say that this issue may be one that will be perpetual beta as people seem to treat web 2.0, like the metric measurement debate (CBC commentary ), which means that we will use some of the new ideas and technology and at the same time hold onto many of the old ways. The metric debate I felt this clip was appropriate from the CBC archives as similiar points about the cost, time, cultural connections, etc. were brought forward by both sides. The difference is that while this was a Canadian debate the debate over social software is an international debate.

I think in some cases not moving forward or complaining about social software is the result of a combination of protecting our professional turf regardless of which industry we are in and fear that the new technology will cause more problems than it will solve. The issue is though that regardless of how we feel about the new technology that is coming into our world it will not stop coming. We must find a way to contribute that is both comfortable and productive. Meredith Farkas has some suggestions and opinions about libraries using social software that I thought you should all read. She has also included a lengthy set of links that may be of use if you are patient enough to read to the end of her post or if you choose to skip the post that is up to you. I enjoyed it as I have seen some interesting uses for both Facebook and MySpace and I enjoyed her commentary. Thanks Meredith for your input and making me think. I look forward to hearing my colleagues’ response to Libraries in Social Networking Software.

 http://meredith.wolfwater.com/wordpress/2006/05/10/libraries-in-social-networking-software/

 I also enjoyed the input of  Michael Casey and Laura Savastinuk about possibilities for serving our customers in a library 2.0 setting and particularly the discussion about patrons adding reviews, ratings, and tags or subject headings to library catalogue records. There were whispers about this technology before I left cataloguing temporarily to go back to school. The whispers appear to be turning into shouts with articles and blog entries such as Laurel Tarulli’s about social tagging in library catalogues and patron complaints about other people’s tags. The question is why can we not treat patron created content like the comments received on blogs which can be moderated with the appropriate disclaimer.

 http://laureltarulli.wordpress.com/2009/12/30/social-tagging-in-the-catalogue-you-allow-that/

It may require extra time from our already busy day.

It might alienate older users who were comfortable with old system. 

It might actually make it more convienent for library patrons to do their business without ever stepping through the doors of our physical library, thereby, decreasing circ stats, and decreasing the need for staff.

I know the way I have presented these concerns it may seem like I am trivializing them as at least two of the concerns mentioned are contradictory in nature, but I am not trivializing as I have had similiar concerns particularly the one about the extra time it would take me to get used to a new system. The problem is that if we do not change then we will be left behind and not be serving our communities effectively.