Structure and form of folksonomy tags: The road to the public library catalogue

Folksonomies have the potential to add much value to public library catalogues by enabling clients to: store, maintain, and organize items of interest in the catalogue using their own tags. The purpose of this paper is to examine how the tags that constitute folksonomies are structured. Tags were acquired over a thirty-day period from the daily tag logs of three folksonomy sites, Del.icio.us, Furl, and Technorati. The tags were evaluated against section 6 (choice and form of terms) of the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) guidelines for the construction of controlled vocabularies. This evaluation revealed that the folksonomy tags correspond closely to the NISO guidelines that pertain to the types of concepts expressed by the tags, the predominance of single tags, the predominance of nouns, and the use of recognized spelling. Potential problem areas in the structure of the tags pertain to the inconsistent use of the singular and plural form of count nouns, and the incidence of ambiguous tags in the form of homographs and unqualified abbreviations or acronyms. Should library catalogues decide to incorporate folksonomies, they could provide clear guidelines to address these noted weaknesses, as well as links to external dictionaries and references sources such as Wikipedia to help clients disambiguate homographs and to determine if the full or abbreviated forms of tags would be preferable

Social discovery tools: Cataloguing meets user convenience

This paper examines how library users access, use, and interact with two social discovery systems used in two Canadian public library systems. How do public library users interact with social discovery systems? How does usage between the two social discovery systems compare? Daily transaction logs of the social discovery systems used by the two libraries were compiled from May-August, 2010. Fifty sets of bibliographic records were compared to evaluate user-contributed content. Results indicate that features that allow for user-generated content are underused in both systems. Future research will thus focus on clients' motivations for engaging with the social features of social discovery systems, and their perceptions of, and satisfaction with, the benefits of these features

Structure and form of folksonomy tags: The road to the public library catalogue

Folksonomies have the potential to add much value to public library catalogues by enabling clients to: store, maintain, and organize items of interest in the catalogue using their own tags. The purpose of this paper is to examine how the tags that constitute folksonomies are structured. Tags were acquired over a thirty-day period from the daily tag logs of three folksonomy sites, Del.icio.us, Furl, and Technorati. The tags were evaluated against section 6 (choice and form of terms) of the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) guidelines for the construction of controlled vocabularies. This evaluation revealed that the folksonomy tags correspond closely to the NISO guidelines that pertain to the types of concepts expressed by the tags, the predominance of single tags, the predominance of nouns, and the use of recognized spelling. Potential problem areas in the structure of the tags pertain to the inconsistent use of the singular and plural form of count nouns, and the incidence of ambiguous tags in the form of homographs and unqualified abbreviations or acronyms. Should library catalogues decide to incorporate folksonomies, they could provide clear guidelines to address these noted weaknesses, as well as links to external dictionaries and references sources such as Wikipedia to help clients disambiguate homographs and to determine if the full or abbreviated forms of tags would be preferable

The classification research group and the theory of integrative levels

The Classification Research Group (CRG), formed in the UK in 1952, has been one of the most significant contributors to classification research and theory in the latter half of the 20th century. The theoretical work of the Group has involved the study of facet analysis, relational operators, and the theory of integrative levels. The CRG opposed the traditional top-down approach to classification, whereby areas of knowledge are predetermined and then broken down into their constituent elements. The CRG was interested in first piecing together individual elements and then determining the areas of knowledge they form. The CRG looked towards the theory of integrative levels to provide them with the basis for this bottom-up approach to classification. This paper explores and evaluates the CRGÍs efforts to apply the theory of integrative levels to the construction of bibliographic classification systems

Illusions of a ‘Bond’: Tagging Cultural Products across Online Platforms

Structured Abstract Purpose Most studies pertaining to social tagging focus on one platform or platform type, thus limiting the scope of their findings. This study explores social tagging practices across four platforms in relation to cultural products associated with the book Casino Royale, by Ian Fleming. Design/methodology/approach A layered and nested case study approach was used to analyze data from four online platforms: Goodreads, Last.fm, WordPress, and public library social discovery platforms. The top-level case study focuses on the book Casino Royale, by Ian Fleming, and its derivative products. The analysis of tagging practices in each of the four online platforms is nested within the top-level case study. ‘Casino Royale’ was conceptualized as a cultural product (the book), its derived products (e.g., movies, theme songs), as well as a keyword in blogs. A qualitative, inductive, and context-specific approach was chosen to identify commonalities in tagging practices across platforms whilst taking into account the uniqueness of each platform. Findings The four platforms comprise different communities of users, each platform with its own cultural norms and tagging practices. Traditional access points in the library catalogues focused on the subject, location, and fictitious characters of the book. User-generated content across the four platforms emphasized historical events and periods related to the book, and highlighted more subjective access points, such as recommendations, tone, mood, reaction, and reading experience. Revealing shifts occur in the tags between the original book and its cultural derivatives: Goodreads and library catalogues focus almost exclusively on the book, while Last.fm and WordPress make additional cross-references to a wider range of different cultural products, including books, movies, and music. The analyses also yield apparent similarities in certain platforms, such as recurring terms, phrasing and composite or multifaceted tags, as well as a strong presence of genre-related terms for the book and music. Originality/value The layered and nested case study approach presents a more comprehensive theoretical viewpoint and methodological framework by which to explore the study of user-generated metadata pertaining to a range of related cultural products across a variety of online platforms

Introduction : the continuing evolution of social tagging

[Abstract unavailable

Chaste : Cancer, Heart and Soft Tissue Environment

Funding: UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council [grant number EP/N509711/1 (J.K.)].Chaste (Cancer, Heart And Soft Tissue Environment) is an open source simulation package for the numerical solution of mathematical models arising in physiology and biology. To date, Chaste development has been driven primarily by applications that include continuum modelling of cardiac electrophysiology (‘Cardiac Chaste’), discrete cell-based modelling of soft tissues (‘Cell-based Chaste’), and modelling of ventilation in lungs (‘Lung Chaste’). Cardiac Chaste addresses the need for a high-performance, generic, and verified simulation framewor kfor cardiac electrophysiology that is freely available to the scientific community. Cardiac chaste provides a software package capable of realistic heart simulations that is efficient, rigorously tested, and runs on HPC platforms. Cell-based Chaste addresses the need for efficient and verified implementations of cell-based modelling frameworks, providing a set of extensible tools for simulating biological tissues. Computational modelling, along with live imaging techniques, plays an important role in understanding the processes of tissue growth and repair. A wide range of cell-based modelling frameworks have been developed that have each been successfully applied in a range of biological applications. Cell-based Chaste includes implementations of the cellular automaton model, the cellular Potts model, cell-centre models with cell representations as overlapping spheres or Voronoi tessellations, and the vertex model. Lung Chaste addresses the need for a novel, generic and efficient lung modelling software package that is both tested and verified. It aims to couple biophysically-detailed models of airway mechanics with organ-scale ventilation models in a package that is freely available to the scientific community.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Library Catalogues of the Future: A Social Space and Collaborative Tool?

Next-generation catalogues are providing opportunities for library professionals and users to interact, collaborate, and enhance core library functions. Technology, innovation, and creativity are all components that are merging to create a localized, online social space that brings our physical library services and experiences into an online environment. While patrons are comfortable creating usergenerated information on commercial Web sites and social media Web sites, library professionals should be exploring alternative methods of use for these tools within the library setting. Can the library catalogue promote remote readers’ advisory services and act as a localized “Google”? Will patrons or library professionals be the driving force behind user-generated content within our catalogues? How can cataloguers be sure that the integrity of their bibliographic records is protected while inviting additional data sources to display in our catalogues? As library catalogues bring our physical library services into the online environment, catalogues also begin to encroach or “mash-up” with other areas of librarianship that have not been part of a cataloguer’s expertise. Using library catalogues beyond their traditional role as tools for discovery and access raises issues surrounding the expertise of library professionals and the benefits of collaboration between frontline and backroom staff.published or submitted for publicatio

Folksonomies, the Web and Search Engines

The aim of this special issue of Webology is to explore developments in the design of folksonomies, knowledge organization systems, and search engines to reflect end user preferences for describing items of interest. Particular emphasis is placed on folksonomies, an area of study that has grown exponentially since the term was first coined by Thomas Vander Wal in 2004: "Folksonomy is the result of personal free tagging of information and objects (anything with a URL) for one's own retrieval. The tagging is done in a social environment (usually shared and open to others). Folksonomy is created from the act of tagging by the person consuming the information" (Vander Wal, 2007). Since 2004, social software applications and their use of tagging have continued to increase in popularity; in its site dedicated to such applications, Wikipedia (2008) lists no less that 11 extant media sharing sites and 26 social bookmarking sites. This list does not take into account the approximate 20 media cataloguing sites, not to mention the innumerable blogging sites that employ tagging