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Data Science Journal, Volume 6, Open Data Issue, 17 June 2007
tagged articles databases guides journals philadelphia places by laallen ...on 01-NOV-07
PennTags is a site dedicated to academic tagging, but this technology can also be incorporated into an existing library Web presence. Stanford University is also experimenting with social tagging, in order to educate patrons about the library’s resources and to provide a platform for curators to identify quality external Web sites. Instead of a standalone tagging site, the open source content management software Drupal (drupal.org/) forms the base for Stanford’s Information Center site, which also includes wiki and blog modules. From there, the designers have added a del.icio.us module that allows users to find tags organized by subject.
A much better than average report on the relationships between librarianship and the values of libraries and the values held by the media savvy, technology-centered students of today. Describes the two sets of values, and describes how libraries can adabt to the new expectation in meaningful ways.
pg 99 "It is clear that Millennials and others comfortable with a wide range of media and technologies will redefine the traditional manifestations of research and creative activity with these new mashed, cut and pasted creations. For them, the line between consumer and creator is blurred in a way that previously was not possible."
pg 100 "Clear rifts have emerged in the virtual terrain that is occupied by library policies, services and collections and is explored by online users. These rifts or disconnects can be grouped into three classifications for redress. These include technology (infrastructure and integration), policy (copyright, IT policy, liability), and unexploited opportunities."
Useful overview of new ways of thinking about the role of library discovery systems in the context of the networked environment. Highlights the necessary changes to the function of library catalogs now that discovery, location, request and retrieval can be separated from one another.
"Much of the discussion is about improving the catalogue user's experience, not an unreasonable aspiration. However, we really need to put this in the context of a more far-reaching set of issues about discovery and about the continued evolution of library systems, including the catalogue, in a changing network environment. In this environment, users increasingly discover resources in places other than the catalogue."
Argues for the usefulness of collaborative tagging, and highlights the known problems with free tagging. Points to some obvious, and some more controversial ways of limiting problems of inter-tagger inconsistency and meaningless distinctions.
In this article we look at what makes folksonomies work. We agree with the premise that tags are no replacement for formal systems, but we see this as being the core quality that makes folksonomy tagging so useful. We begin by looking at the issue of "sloppy tags", a problem to which critics of folksonomies are keen to allude, and ask if there are ways the folksonomy community could offset such problems and create systems that are conducive to searching, sorting and classifying. We then go on to question this "tidying up" approach and its underlying assumptions, highlighting issues surrounding removal of low-quality, redundant or nonsense metadata, and the potential risks of tidying too neatly and thereby losing the very openness that has made folksonomies so popular.
Looks at the development of various classification systems leading up to tagging, or user created metadata. Argues that tagging more closely mirrors the nature of web information.
Argues that ontologies are a bad ideal for organizing the world online. Points out that library classification systems are designed to optimize space on the shelves, not to describe the essences of identities. Also, that library classification systems are fundamentally about organizing books, not about organizing the enormity of human knowledge. The same flaws exists in a hierarchical file system. That it is designed with the assumption that a thing can only be in one place at one time -- it makes some attempt to have the organizional structure of ideas match the physical world, where in fact a pointer, or an idea, or a metaphorical path can be in countless places at the same time, and can have many equally important and useful relationships which describe it.
That ontologies are useful where there are expert users, clear categories and a limited domain. But, much less useful for non-expert users or large domains, and fuzzy categories. Links are the universal pointers on the web, and the addition of tags is simple, and provides a much more useful finding system than an ontology. With a system like delicious, you get to know who's doing the tagging, not just what the tags are, so you get to limit searches by people and time, limiting the size of your group [penntags tie-in].
This article examines the Neighborhood Transformation Initiative (NTI), Mayor John F. Street’s plan to revitalize Philadelphia’s distressed neighborhoods by issuing $295 million in bonds to finance the acquisition of property, the demolition of derelict buildings, and the assembling of large tracts of land for housing redevelopment. Despite its resemblance to the discredited urban renewal programs of the past, this plan offered real potential for reducing blight by leveraging substantial private investment at a time when public subsidies
for affordable housing and community development have been steadily diminishing.
However, NTI did not promote equitable development that might have fostered broader support for an inherently controversial plan. Moreover, Street’s initial leadership in proposing this bold initiative was followed by a reluctance to promote NTI aggressively after it was adopted in 2002. The result was a watered-down effort that achieved some goals but has fallen short of what might have been accomplished.
My favorite article. I wish I could force you to read this article. please...
"And you would never ever get this organization of knowledge right. Its not a solvable problem. It cant be done. Theres not a right way of doing it because there’s no single way of organizing this stuff. Taxonomies are not reflections of nature, they’re tools. And tools depend on what you want to do. It depends on your context. So along comes tagging."
Paste a paragraph from an article, paper, etc into this search engine and get back a list of relevant or similar articles. On first inspection, it seems pretty fantastic as a search engine, but has very very limited results. Very very few sources.
The Learner's Library™ is a simple and intuitive search tool that locates relevant material from any text based content repository...our Virtual Research Assistant allows you to input whole articles, papers, notes or outlines (up to 10000 words at a time) and get back the materials you need for meaningful research....our custom publishing interface allows the easy creation of custom coursepacks and reading packs with but a few clicks.... our CiteRight® citation checking tool examines your written work and shows you what in your work needs a citation from material in the content repository.