UKOLN is supported by:

1. Folksonomies: Community Metadata? Marieke Guy Interoperability Focus UKOLN is supported by: www.bath.ac.uk

2. A Brief Introduction… • UKOLN… • Is based at the University of Bath • Is funded by JISC and MLA • Has a HE / FE and cultural heritage sector remit • The Interoperability Focus Team.. • My previous roles…. • My interest in classification and folksonomies….

3. Lazy tagging Folk taxonomy Postcoordinate indexing Collaborative categorisation Mob indexing Bags of keywords User-generated metadata Ethnoclassification Personalised classification Distributed classification system Folksonomies?

4. What is a Folksonomy? • Keywords, tags, metadata • Created by groups/communities who are the resource users • Natural language – common understanding • No hierarchy, no specified parent-child or sibling relationships between terms • Feedback • Categorisation rather than classification • Not a taxonomy, not a folks taxonomy Taxonomy - a subject-based classification that arranges the terms of a controlled vocabulary into a hierarchy Taxonomy - a subject-based classification that arranges the terms of a controlled vocabulary into a hierarchy Folks taxonomy - Taxonomies that are embedded in local cultural and social systems, a vernacular naming system

5. Categorisation/Classification Categorisation • Less rigorous • Looks at similarity of items • Items can have many terms associated with them • No clearly defined relations between the terms in the vocabulary • E.g. del.icio.us • Classification • Rigorous • Systematic arrangement of items • Focus is on providing a single classification to an item • Very hierarchical • E.g.Yahoo!

6. Folksonomy Tags • Tags are pieces of information separate from, but related to, an object – def. Wikipedia • People can tag their resources with any tag they like • People tend to use: • Colloquial phrasese.g. blokes, streetperformers • Localisatione.g. bath, bathspa, england, romanbaths • Personalisatione.g. greatday, myholiday • subjective qualificatione.g. cold, funny http://www.motive.co.nz/glossary/folksonomy.php

7. What’s the Animal? Flat hierarchy – no clearly defined relations between the terms • Can hear some vocalisations that are below the range of human hearing • Eats grass and leaves • Lives in the African plains • Weight 3- 6 tonnes • Very large ears

8. What’s the Animal? Traditional Classification Very hierarchical • Kingdom - Animalia • Phylum - Chordata • Class - Mammalia • Order - Proboscidea • Family - Elephantidae • Genus - Loxodonta

9. History of Folksonomies • Digital networks have increased the ability to work ad-hoc and as part of a community • In the late 1990’s Weblogs were popularised, the rise of user centred metadata begins • Del.icio.us, developed by Joshua Schachter, went live in late 2003 and the ability to add tags using a non-hierarchical keyword categorisation system was added in early 2004 • Tagging was quickly replicated by other social software • In late 2004 the Folksonomy name was coined by Thomas Vander Wal through a mailing list • Since early 2005 numerous sites have sprung up and ‘Folksonomy’ is the buzz word of the moment

10. Not a New Idea…. • Abandoning taxonomy for lists of keywords is not a new idea • Faceted classification - assignment of multiple classifications to an object • John Udell argues that the fundamental difference is feedback: “Sometimes a difference in degree becomes a difference in kind. The degree to which these systems bind the assignment of tags to their use - in a tight feedback loop - is that kind of difference.” • Broad folksonomies (lots of users tagging one object) • Narrow folksonomies (a small number of users tagging individual items)

11. Folksonomy Sites #1 • Bookmarks • del.icio.us – http://del.icio.us/ • Tagsy –http://tagsy.com/ • jots – http://jots.com/ • BlogMarkshttp://blogmarks.net/ • Connotea – http://www.connotea.org/ • CiteULike –http://www.citeulike.org/ • Feedmarker – http://www.feedmarker.com/ Social Bookmarking Tools (I) A General Reviewhttp://www.dlib.org/dlib/april05/hammond/04hammond.html

12. Folksonomy Sites #2 • Images, video and sound • flikr – http://www.flickr.com/ • vimeo –http://www.vimeo.com/ • Up to 11 – http://www.upto11.net/ • Freesound –http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/ • GenieLab –http://genielab.com/ • Technorati (blogs) – http://www.technorati.com/

13. Folksonomy Sites #3 • Other • Up coming (events) –http://upcoming.org/ • Poetry x – http://poetryx.com/ • 43 things (goals) – http://www.43things.com/ • 24 eyes (rss) –http://www.24eyes.com/ • Tagzania (places) – http://www.tagzania.com/ • colr.org (colour) – http://www.colr.org/ Good list of siteshttp://tagging.pagina.nl/

14. Why Create a Folksonomy? • Because we can….  • It is free/cheap • We enjoy doing it – very popular sites • The Internet is for the masses e.g.Google page rank algorythm • We like being part of a community • Because it’s an easy way to give attention to and make sense of resources • Social classification provides insight not just into content, but into users and context as well (added value) • Bottom line: There is clearly a perceived advantage in creating folksonomies

15. Strengths of Folksonomies • Serendipity – browsing versus finding • Cheap and extendable • Reclaiming the Web • Quick and responsive to user needs • Community – trust • People have their own space (unlike with wikis) • Feedback • Scalability, easy for everyone to use • Desire lines – classification systems can emerge • Added value metadata

16. Limitations of Folksonomies • Ambiguity • Only single words – no spaces allowed (only some) • No homonym, synonyms, hypernym or localisation control • Uncontrolled and chaotic • Imprecise • Many tags are single use (del.icio.us say 190,000 of 200,000), many compound words • Do not support searching as well as controlled vocabularies

17. The Future for Folksonomies A folksonomy represents simultaneously some of the best and worst in the organization of information.” Robin Good

18. Implications of Folksonomies • Fundamental shift in metadata creation – user led • Fundamental trigger for communication and sharing • Lowers the barriers to cooperation • New idea: meaning comes from our common view of the world • It’s got people talking about metadata!! • Yahoo or Google? Hierarchy doesn’t work so well on the Web • But the two models (formal vs informal) are not mutually exclusive • Folksonomies provide a snap shot of the understanding and use of terms – librarians take note! • Abuse/spam?

19. Some Food for Thought…#1 • Links to more formal systems e.g Folksonomic Zeitgeist • Libraries and Folksonomies • Tag clustering, tag bundles • More data on the tags people use • Educating users and improving tag literacy • Creating smarter systems • User profiling, collaborative rank and community view on information

20. Some Food for Thought…#2 • Metadata on tags • Visualising tags - extisp.icio.us, tag.alicio.us, facetious, tag maps, geotagging • Internationalisation • Shared tags between a community become a thesaurus • More exploration alongside other projects like the semantic Web • Interested in Philosophising…You’re It – Blog on tagging - http://www.tagsonomy.com/

21. Time for the Panel Session… • Any questions? • Thanks…