Tagging: People-powered Metadata for the Social Web Review

Tagging: People-powered Metadata for the Social Web
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This was a really good book. It wasn't what I expected it to be. But it was a worthwhile read. I picked it up because I do a fair amount of work writing book reviews and making guides and booklists on Amazon. And Amazon now lets guys like me create tags for the books I review and include in guides and lists. I kind of expected this book would have talked a little bit about the Amazon system of tagging. Nope. But that's OK. It's still a good book. It includes seven chapters and three appendices:
1. What is tagging?
2. The value of tagging
3. Tagging system architecture
4. Tags, metadata, and classical systems
5. Navigation and visualization
6. Interfaces
7. Technical design
A. Case study: social bookmarking
B. Case study: media sharing
C. Case study: personal information management
Tagging is a form of information that is really starting to take root in our computer systems and online systems. I first experienced it back in 1998 when I purchased a copy of Lotus Organizer to use as my Personal Information Manager (PIM) when practicing law. The program allowed me to cross-reference the many lists I had created in its database. I thought it was really cool back then.
I was just getting into creating Web sites in 1998, too. And I found the tagging features in Lotus Organizer enabled me to do with the data in my database what I was doing with my Web pages in my Web sites. Basically tagging is another name for hyperlinking. Nothing more and nothing less. A tag will take you to a new idea, concept, data item, data page, or database. It's a springboard that will take you to information.
This book points out that tagging is a new form of information management as it relates to personal organization, information architecture, and online communities. I suppose my Lotus Organizer program is an example of the first, and Amazon's system is an example of the last. So is it really all that new?
All in all, this book explains the value of tagging. It's a guide to what, how and why to tag. Each chapter ended in a list of bullet points called a Summary. I liked this feature very much since it helped me skim through the book quickly. 5 stars!

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Tagging is fast becoming one of the primary ways people organize and manage digital information. Tagging complements traditional organizational tools like folders and search on users desktops as well as on the web. These developments mean that tagging has broad implications for information management, information architecture and interface design. And its reach extends beyond these technical domains to our culture at large. We can imagine, for example, the scrapbookers of the future curating their digital photos, emails, ticket stubs and other mementos with tags. This book explains the value of tagging, explores why people tag, how tagging works and when it can be used to improve the user experience. It exposes tagging's superficial simplicity to reveal interesting issues related to usability, information architecture, online community and collective intelligence.

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