You are on page 1of 12

Folksonomies as Subject Access - A Survey of Tagging in Library Online Catalogs and Discovery Layers

Yan Yi Lee & Sharon Q. Yang

Abstract This paper describes a survey on how system vendors and libraries handled tagging in OPACs and discovery layers. Tags are user added subject metadata, also called folksonomies. This survey also investigated user behavior when they face the possibility to tag. The findings indicate that legacy/classic systems have no tagging capability. About 47% of the discovery tools provide tagging function. About 49% of the libraries that have a system with tagging capability have turned the tagging function on in their OPACs and discovery tools. Only 40% of the libraries that turned tagging on actually utilized user added subject metadata as access point to collections. Academic library users are less active in tagging than public library users. Introduction Folksonomy is a term created by Thomas Vander Wal by combining taxonomy with folk (Steele, 2009). Simply put, folksonomy is a classification of resources created by the general public. Users add keywords to describe a resource on the Web and those user generated keywords are called tags. The action of adding tags is called tagging. Tag cloud refers to the display of the accumulated tags as a way to access resources. Gene Smith describes a tag cloud as "a method of presenting tags where the more frequently used tags are, emphasized usually in size or color. Tag clouds tell you at a glance which tags are more popular. Each tag is a link" (Smith, 2009). Tag cloud is a visual subject classification scheme showing more popular or less important resources based on the font and color of terms. See Figure 1 for example of a tag cloud.
Figure 1. Tag Cloud in the OPAC of Stow-Munroe Falls Public Library

Both librarians and computer scientists became interested in tagging and tag cloud from their inception. In the last five years there were many studies to compare user-created tags with controlled vocabularies, especially the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH). In 2007, Tiffany Smith compared the LC subject headings in five books to tags for the same books found in LibraryThing. Even though he set out to measure the efficacy of tagging as subject access, he did not reach any concrete conclusions. Since then there have been many studies on a larger scale to compare LCSH with tags in LibraryThing. Those include the studies by Heymann and Garcia-Molina (2009), Lawson (2009), Peterson (2009), Rolla (2009), Wetterstrom (2009), Thomas (2009), Liu, Park, and Hu (2010), just to name a few. Methodology of most research in this area included extracting titles, ISBNs, and LC Subject Headings in MARC 650 fields of OCLC or LC bibliographic records and searching the same books in LibraryThing by ISBN. The LCSH and tags for the same books were compared for duplication, quality, coverage, and effectiveness. Thus far all the research, either by librarians or computer scientists, has been positive about tagging. Findings indicate that folksonomies often use different terms from LCSH and can provide additional subject access to library collections although sometimes there may be up to 60% overlapping (Yi and Chan, 2009). User generated tags may cover more aspects of a books subject (Rolla, 2009). Linking folksonomies to LCSH has been called for by Yi and Chan (2009). Even the Library of Congress Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control has suggested that libraries should open up their catalogs to allow users to add descriptive tags to the bibliographic data in catalog records (Rolla, 2009). It has been almost a year since the last study yielding positive findings about tagging as a viable subject access point to compliment LCSH and other controlled vocabularies in online catalogs. What actions have vendors taken to incorporate tagging into library systems? What have libraries done to add folksonomies in addition to LCSH in bib records? How do users respond to tagging capability in library catalogs and discovery tools? This paper aims to answer those questions by conducting a survey of library systems, libraries, and tagging activities by users.

Library Systems and Folksonomies Have system vendors taken folksonomies into consideration when designing catalogs and discovery tools? In order to find out how the current library systems handle folksonomies, the authors used Marshall Breedings Technology Guide (Breeding, 2012) to obtain a comprehensive list of major library systems with an OPAC, including 37 Integrated Library Systems (ILS) and 15 discovery tools (also referred to as next generation catalog). An extensive study of all the 37 major ILS systems revealed that only two ILS OPACs, Koha and Genesis G3, allow users to add tags and only Koha uses tags to enhance subject access. See Figure 2 for a list of the ILS.

Figure 2. ILS OPACs


Library Automation System Column1 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 Agent VERSO Aleph 500 Alexandria Amlib Apollo Athena Atriuum Carl.X Circulation Plus Concourse DB/TextWorks Destiny Dynix EOS Web Evergreen Evolve Genesis G3 GLAS Horizon InfoCentre Innopac Koha Liberty3 Library Solution LibraryWorld Mandarin M3 Millennium OPALS Polaris Portfolio ResourceMate Spydus Unicorn (Symphony) Virtua Voyager Vubis Smart Winnebago Spectrum Total Allow Users to add tags No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No Yes No No No No Yes No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No 5.41% Tag Cloud No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No Yes No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No 2.70% Tag List No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No 0.00% Tag to start a new search No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No 2.70% Tag to refine a search No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No 0.00%

Only about 5% of the major library systems allow tagging. It comes as no surprise that most legacy or classic ILS do not embed folksonomies as they were developed in the 1990s when folksonomy was not yet popular. User contributed tags and tag lists or clouds more often exist in the newer ILS such as Koha, which was created in 1999, (Koha Library Software Community, 2012) and discovery tools that have come into existence in the past five years. A discovery tool is a stand-alone catalog with advanced features of next generation catalog (NGC) that is developed independently from any ILS. Libraries can use a discovery tool to replace its OPAC or use it side by side with the OPAC. The following is a list of 15 major discovery tools that have been deployed worldwide. Authors randomly chose ten examples from user lists for each discovery layer compiled by Marshall Breeding (Breeding, 2012) and examined presence and absence of folksonomies and how they are being used as subject access in the chosen implementations. Observing a system in action will shed light on its design. The documentation for a system is consulted for clarification when necessary. The findings are summarized in Figure 3.
Systems Figure 3. Folksonomies within Discovery Tools Allow Users Tag Cloud Tag list to add tags Yes No No Yes No Yes No No Yes No No Yes No Yes Yes 47% Yes No No No No Yes No No Yes No No Yes No No Yes 33% Yes No No Yes No Yes No No Yes No No No No Yes Yes 40% Tag to start a new search Yes No No Yes No Yes No No Yes No No Yes No Yes Yes 47% Tag to refine a search Yes No No Yes No Yes No No No No No No No No No 20%

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

AquaBrowser AXIELL ARENA Blacklight Biblio Commons EBSCO Discover Service Encore Endeca Enterprise Primo Scriblio Summon SOPAC Visualizer VuFind WorldCat Local Total

Only 7 out of 15 discovery tools (about 47%) provide tagging function. Only one third of the discovery tools are capable of displaying tags as a cloud with visual representation by fonts and size based on frequency of use and popularity. About 40% can display a tag list which looks like clickable Library of Congress subject headings. About 47% of the discovery tools use tags to execute a new search, while only 20% use it to refine or narrow a search. A system that allows users to add tags may not necessarily provide tag cloud or list as subject access. Encore, Biblio Commons, and AquaBrowser are the best in tagging among discovery tools. Encore can choose to display either a tag cloud or a tag list to refine or narrow a search. Its tag
4

cloud or list is a mixture of user added tags and keywords from bibliographic records. Drawing keywords from bibliographic records will make sure that the tag cloud is always present with an abundance of tags. The user added tags are also displayed separately under Community Tags in a record view and will execute a new search to retrieve all the items being tagged. AquaBrowser displays a word cloud for variant spelling, related words/associations, and synonyms and its tag cloud is not based on user added tags. In AquaBrowser the real tag cloud contributed by a user remains private in a users account behind login. Biblio Commons displays tags at the start page for searching and later as a facet to refine or narrow a search. All three of the discovery tools are doing an excellent job with folksonomies as additional subject access to collections.

Libraries and Folksonomies When an ILS OPAC or discovery tool has tagging capability, did libraries take advantage of this function? The authors chose Koha OPAC as an example and did a survey of tagging activities in the OPACs of 307 Koha implementers. Koha is an open source ILS that is widely used in libraries all over the world. Tagging is one of the important features in its system design. After adding tags, users can choose to keep these tags private and hidden in his account, or publish them in OPAC as a Cloud. Subsequently librarians can decide to turn on or off a Tag Cloud. Librarians also decide whether the tags created by users can be published in OPAC directly, or must be proved by librarians before publishing. An external dictionary can be installed in the Koha system. It serves as a whitelist and help librarians to verify terms added by users. The 307 libraries, including 218 public, 62 academic, and 27 school libraries, are taken from Library Technology Guide (Breeding, 2012) for the survey. It is the most comprehensive and complete list of Koha users published so far. The first step in the survey was to check 307 OPACs to determine how many have enabled tagging. Figure 4 is a breakdown of the 307 Koha users by library type based on presence or absence of tagging function in the OPAC. Figure 5 displays the same statistics by bar chart. Tags are enabled in 107 public libraries, almost half of the total 218. The percentage is higher for academic libraries at 58%. But fewer school libraries, only 22%, allow users to create tags. On average, 49% of libraries allow their users to create tags, or add their own subject terms for library materials while 51% of libraries turned off the tagging function.

Figure 4. Tagging in 307 Koha OPACs by Type of Libraries


Library Type Public Academic School All Libraries Total Libraries 218 62 27 307 Total Libraries (Tags Enabled) 107 36 6 149 Percentage (Tags Enabled) 49.08% 58.06% 22.22% 48.53% Total Libraries (Tags Disabled) 111 26 21 158 Percentage (Tags Disabled) 50.92% 41.94% 77.78% 51.47%

Figure 5. Tagging in 307 Koha OPACs by Types of Libraries 90.00% 80.00% 70.00% 60.00% 50.00% 40.00% 30.00% 20.00% 10.00% 0.00%

Percentage (Tags Enabled) Percentage (Tags Disabled)

Users and folksonomies How much did users take advantage of the opportunity for tagging? Around 50% of the sample libraries allow users to add their tags to Koha online catalog. In some libraries, users added their tags to catalogs actively, and created large clouds. But in other libraries, users added only a few tags. Tag clouds by the 307 libraries are grouped into 4 categories: large cloud, small cloud, empty cloud, and no cloud. A large cloud includes over 50 tags, and a small cloud includes less than 50 tags. An empty cloud has no tags in it. That means users did not add any tags even though librarians turned on tagging function. The last category no cloud means that librarians did not turned on Tagging in system. Figure 6 is a summary of 149 libraries that turned on tagging in Figure 4 and 5. About 40% have large clouds while 46% have small clouds and 14% have empty clouds. Large clouds can be used as subject access to collections. Small and empty clouds are generally useless. Authors found that users in 40% of the sample libraries are interested in tagging, and trying to describe library resources in their own language. They are trying to build their own access points in library
6

catalog. In 60% of the sample libraries, users did not pay attention to tagging. They may even not be aware of the existence of tagging capability in a catalog.
Figure 6. 149 libraries with Tagging Turned on

Cloud type Large Cloud Small Cloud Empty Cloud Total

Number of libraries 60 68 21 149

Percentages 40% 46% 14% 100%

Figure 7 is a summary of tag clouds of all the 307 libraries. About 51% of libraries turned off tagging and therefore have no tag clouds. 22% of libraries have small insignificant clouds which are almost useless as subject access. Only 20% of them have large clouds that are highly effective in retrieving materials. We may safely conclude that around 20% of libraries are using tags as subject search keys. Some tag clouds reside in user accounts behind login and some in public such as published clouds in OPACs. Even though almost half of the 307 Koha libraries encouraged users to participate in tagging by turning the function on, 7% of the libraries did not receive any tags from users. Figure 8 is a graphical summary of the same data as in Figure 7.

Figure 7. Tag Clouds in 307 Koha Libraries


Library Type Public Academic School All Total Libraries 218 62 27 307 Tag Cloud > 50 tags 58 2 0 60 Percentage > 50 tags 26.61% 3.23% 0.00% 19.54% Tag Cloud < 50 tags 38 27 3 68 Percentage < 50 tags 17.43% 43.55% 11.11% 22.15% Tag Cloud zero tag 11 7 3 21 Percentage zero tag 5.05% 11.29% 11.11% 6.84% Tag Cloud turned off 111 26 21 158 Percentage no tag cloud 50.91% 41.93% 77.78% 51.47%

Figure 8. Tag Cloud in 307 Koha Libraries

Tag Cloud in 307 Libaraies


Large Tag Cloud (over 50 tags) Small Tag Cloud (less than 50 tags) 51% 22% 7% Empty Tag Cloud (no tags) Tag Cloud not turned on

20%

Figure 9 is a comparison by library type. Even though more academic libraries allow their users to add tags (58% vs. 48% for public libraries), they have very few large clouds in academic OPACs. Academic library users are not so active in adding tags to catalogs. In contrast, users in public libraries are more active in adding and using tags, which led to more large clouds.
Figure 9. Tag Cloud in Koha Libraries A Comparison 90.00% 80.00% 70.00% 60.00% 50.00% 40.00% 30.00% 20.00% 10.00% 0.00% Public Academic School Percentage (> 50 tags) Percentage (< 50 tags) Percentage (no tags) Percentage (tags disabled)

Tag Cloud in Public Libraries Public library users are more active than academic or school library users in adding tags to online catalog. Figure 10 describes tag clouds in 218 public libraries. Around 27% of 218 public libraries have large tag clouds so that patrons can use them to search the entire catalog. 17% have small tag clouds. As some small tag clouds include only one or two tags which are not useful. 5% of the public libraries do not have any user added tags and the rest (about 51%) did not enable tagging in their system.
Figure 10. Tag Clouds in 218 Public Libraries

Tag Cloud in Public Libraries


Large Tag Cloud (over 50 tags) 27% 51% 17% Small Tag Cloud (less than 50 tags) Empty Tag Cloud (no tags) Tag Cloud not turned on

5%

Some tags are very close to subjects or keywords, such as nature, religion, or web 2.0. But most tags created by public library users may describe resources for the use of certain communities, or only themselves, such as Summer Reading Club, Toddler Time, or Great Movies.

Tag Cloud in Academic Libraries Most academic library users are not creating large tag clouds. Figure 11 illustrates tag clouds in 62 academic libraries. Only a small portion of academic libraries, 3%, enjoy large tag clouds. 44% of them have small tag clouds, and 11% have an empty tag cloud. 42% of 62 academic libraries did not turn on tagging. Only a few academic libraries are actually using tag clouds for searching in catalog.

Figure 11. Tag Cloud in 62 Academic Libraries

Tag Cloud in Academic Libraries


3% Large Tag Cloud (over 50 tags) 42% 44% Small Tag Cloud (less than 50 tags) Empty Tag Cloud (no tags) Tag Cloud not turned on

11%

Tag Cloud in School Libraries Figure 12 shows tag clouds in school libraries. The majority of school libraries did not turn on tagging. Only 11% of school libraries have small tag clouds. Each cloud includes one or two tags at most. Essentially, school libraries do not use tagging at all. More research is needed to look into the reason behind this phenomenon.

Figure12. Tag Cloud in 27 School Libraries

Tag Cloud in School Libraries


0% 11% 11% Large Tag Cloud (over 50 tags) Small Tag Cloud (less than 50 tags) Empty Tag Cloud (no tags) 78% Tag Cloud not turned on

Conclusion Research provided evidence in support of folksonomies as a viable alternate subject access to resources. Very few legacy or classic ILSs are capable of this function. The next generation ILS, Koha, is an exception. Only half of newly developed discovery tools (47%) allow tagging. To get a glimpse of how much libraries are taking advantage of a system with tagging capability, the authors used Koha as an example and found that only half of the libraries (49%) enabled tagging. Among the user libraries that enabled tagging, only 40% have large tag clouds that appear useful, while 46% do not have adequately meaningful clouds (small clouds) and 14% have given users the opportunity to add tags, but users did not show any interest, thus resulting in empty clouds. Based on the above findings, the authors recommend that more vendors should add tagging capability in the future release of new systems. Those systems with tagging should refine it for better access to collections. Libraries should find ways to more aggressively promote tagging activities. Research should be done to investigate why half of the libraries do not allow users to add tags and why academic library users are less interested in tagging than public library users. Tagging is a Web 2.0 phenomenon where user participation is anticipated. It is only right that we allow users to share their wisdom in cataloging.

10

References Breeding, M. (2012). Guides: Resources and content on relevant topics. In Library technology guides: Key resources in the field of library automation [This site has comprehensive listings of Integrated Library Systems and discovery tools]. Retrieved March 6, 2012, from http://www.librarytechnology.org/web/Breeding/guides/ Kwan, Y., & Lois Mai, C. (2009). Linking folksonomy to Library of Congress subject headings: an exploratory study. Journal Of Documentation, 65(6), 872-900. Heymann, P., & Garcia-Molina, H. (2009, March). Contrasting controlled vocabulary and tagging: Do experts choose the right names to label the wrong things? Paper presented at of the Second International Conference on Web Search and Web Data Mining, Barcelona, Spain. Retrieved from http://ilpubs.stanford.edu:8090/955/1/cvuv-lbrp.pdf Koha Library Software Community. (2012). History. Retrieved April 28, 2012, from Koha Library Software Community website: http://koha-community.org/about/history/ Lawson, K. G. (2009). Mining Social Tagging Data for Enhanced Subject Access for Readers And Researchers. Journal Of Academic Librarianship, 35(6), 574-582. Library of Congress Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control (2008). On the Record: Report of the Library of Congress Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control (2008), www.loc.gov/bibliographic-future/news/lcwgontherecord-jan08-final.pdf (accessed Feb. 23,2009). Liu, C., Park, J., & Hu, X. (2010). User tags versus expert-assigned subject terms: A comparison Of LibraryThing tags and Library of Congress Subject Headings. Journal Of Information Science, 36(6), 763-779. doi:10.1177/0165551510386173 Peterson, E. (2009). Patron Preferences for Folksonomy Tags: Research Findings When Both Hierarchical Subject Headings and Folksonomy Tags Are Used. Evidence Based Library & Information Practice, 4(1), 53-56. Rolla, P. J. (2009). User Tags versus Subject Headings: Can User-Supplied Data Improve Subject Access to Library Collections?. Library Resources & Technical Services, 53(3), 174-184. Smith, G. (2008). Voices That Matter Series: Tagging: People-powered metadata for the social Web.Berkeley, CA: New Riders.

11

Smith, T. (2007, October). Cataloging and you: .Mmeasuring the efficacy of a folksonomy. Paper presented at The 18th Workshop of the American Society for Information Science and Technology Special Interest Group in Classification Research, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Retrieved from DLIST: Digital Library of Information Science & Technology database. Steele, T. (2009). The new cooperative cataloging. Library Hi Tech, 27(1), 68-77. Thomas, M., Caudle, D. M., & Schmitz, C. M. (2009). To tag or not to tag?. Library Hi Tech, 27(3), 411-434. Wetterstrom, M. (2008). The Complementarity of Tags and LCSH A Tagging Experiment And Investigation into Added Value in a New Zealand Library Context. New Zealand Library & Information Management Journal, 50(4), 296-310. Yi, K., & Chan, L. (2009). Linking folksonomy to Library of Congress subject headings: an exploratory study. Journal Of Documentation, 65(6), 872-900.

12

You might also like