Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Thing #20 - Find and Describe a Folksonomy

Many web 2.0 sites (e.g. Del.icio.us, LibraryThing, Flickr) provide the means for a folksonomy to develop, i.e. they allows site users to "tag" objects collaboratively thereby developing a shared descriptive vocabulary for those objects. As an example, here is a link to the results of applying a folksonomy to describing our library's website (as developed by the users of del.icio.us):
Tag Cloud for Halifax Public Libraries' Website

Some other interesting sites related to the concept of folksonomy:

In spite of the oft' quoted disadvantages of folksonomies when compared to carefully constructed taxonomies and controlled vocabularies (i.e. the lack of consistency, the use of synonyms, etc.) I suspect that in the rapidly changeable world of electronic information the rate at which strict taxonomies can be updated and adapted will increasingly be their downfall.

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