Tagging and Folksonomies

I really like the concept of tag clouds for catalogs as at the Ann Arbor District Library or as discussed at the Shifted Librarian. Of course this presupposes that you are building a folksonomy in your catalog, but I think there are a lot of advantages to that too as an additional searching method. I do not advocate losing keyword searching or LC subject searching in favor of folksonomies.

Advantages:

Patrons can use real language to enhance your catalog.

You can have lots of tags for the same concept.

You’ll get terms that librarians probably wouldn’t think of in a million years. (All right, this could be a disadvantage as well as an advantage, but lets accentuate the positive, yes?)

It will enhance patrons’ sense of ownership of the library.

Disadvantages:

All those tags could clutter up your catalog.

Patrons might be offended by tags.

Melissa.