Comments on: Explicit and implicit metadata

By: Peter van Boheemen

Peter van Boheemen — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 15:06:11 +0000

Automatic metadata generation. Great, but already very hard to do with text. Does enable context relevant indexing, when you will use a specialized thesaurus to do this for example.
With other material this does not work very well. Unless you are interested in any picture containing a lot of red. (Could be interesting if you are looking for horror movies)

By: Lukas Koster

Lukas Koster — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 09:09:23 +0000

Thanks mpol. I agree that, if “social tagging” is enabled in a catalog, you will probably see groups of experts (virtual communities, “tribes”) emerging who will be taking care of this, within their specific subject area. This could take care of the problem of “lagging” controlled vocabularies, and librarians unable to keep up with raid developments.

But I also think that one person’s contribution may be as valuable as a large group’s. In my example of “semantic web”, if you would search for subject heading “semantic web” in a Dutch catalog, you would not find anything, because the official controlled vocabulary term is “Semantisch web”. Then if one end user would add the “semantic web” tag, this would benefit everybody.

Also, if we want to attract more young people to our catalogs and libraries, then it definitely is time to allow social tagging on our systems. A lot of terms in the Dutch National Subject Headings controlled vocabulary appear very archaic, even to me! Next generations of ens users would not think of using words like that to search for information, because they are using completely different (modern) terminology. So it is either: allow social tagging or completely revolutionise the way libraries are usingcontrolled vocabularies, if we do not want our catalogs to loose it to Google.

By: Lukas Koster

Lukas Koster — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 18:48:08 +0000

Hi Anette, Interesting idea! a kind of “concise” full text index. Can we try that? What is the url to your catalogue?
Works only if you have ToC’s of course

By: mpol

mpol — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 14:18:09 +0000

As a cataloger myself, I appreciate that you regard controlled vocabulary subject headings and social tagging as complementary. Too many want to replace one with the other — and I completely agree that social tagging could add to a record, but never truly replace controlled subject headings.

I do think that there are greater problems with the use of social tagging than many people realize. The optimism is based on the assumption that people are interested in everything — yet what you need is a large enough group, interested in a specific topic, enough of whom are interested in tagging, to reach a large enough grouping of tags in order to actually add value. ONE person adding a tag to a record is not necessarily as valuable as ten persons adding the same or similar tags. Yet many items/records will have only that ONE tag.

I actually attended a presentation at LC a few years ago — dates blur — by a librarian from the World Bank. She was cataloging a lot of electronic documents for their collection and they had developed, as a result, a piece of software that would search the text and suggest subject heading or keywords. That sounds a lot like your dream idea there at the end. And it takes care of the fulltext-is-not-keyword problem, as explained here: http://scienceblogs.com/bookoftrogool/2009/08/please_dont_do_this_a_word_abo.php

I do know that LCSH is working toward the possibility of social tagging enriching LCSH subject headings. But I think the technicalities of it, as well as the level of human involvement, are still being discussed. My awareness of this is based on a recent chat, not thorough knowledge.

By: Anette Seiler

Anette Seiler — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 06:37:55 +0000

What about catalogue enrichment with tables of content? We scan the tocs of all new books an build search indexes over the ocr. TOCs give more relevant information than a full text search over all the text of the book.

By: Lukas Koster

Lukas Koster — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 18:55:50 +0000

Bryan, thanks! So there are actually differences in controlled vocabularies worldwide. Apparently the LoC Subject Headings Authority file is better in this respect than the Dutch National Authority file.
Note that your link points to the recent Linked Data/RDF interface to the LoC Authority files!

By: Lukas Koster

Lukas Koster — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 18:51:33 +0000

Shannon, good question. Well, yes, that would be an option, especially as long as the analysing software is not intelligent enough. But suppose the software was perfect, or let’s say better than human catalogers, we wouldn’t need humans anymore, would we?

By: Lukas Koster

Lukas Koster — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 18:45:20 +0000

Jonathan, you are right again, with “better controlled vocabulary”. But you could also consider this a part of “better cataloging”. But, yes, maybe the controlled vocabularies aren’t flexible enough?

Your point about “tagging an item in the library not with free text, but with any concept that exists in Wikipedia”, well, that is Linked Data!

By: VocabControl » Social Tagging and the Enterprise: Does Tagging Work at Work?

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 17:48:20 +0000

[...] Here’s a similar take: Explicit and implicit metadata @ CommonPlace.Net [...]

By: Bryan

Bryan — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 17:20:58 +0000

LCSH offers RDF (Document markup language) (http://id.loc.gov/authorities/sh2003010124), although should the cross reference be start with “Resources” or “Resource.” I have only seen the singular in print. Anyway, it’s something to build on.