Tagging

The You Tube video "The Machine is Us/ing Us" raised a very important question: Who will organize all of this data? The answer given was: we will all organize the data.

Ok, this is where I admit that there is a bit of a traditional librarian in me. Organizing tons of data with tags and no other parameters may not be the best idea. I agree that there are benefits to tagging (mainly flexibility). However, tagging presents a challenge because not all people call something by the same name. For example, if I'm using Delicious to look for information about cars, do I search for car, cars, automobile, auto, autos, or automotive?? Delicious does provide a list of related terms, but not all are listed. And when I click on each term, I get completely different results.

Methods of data organization are way behind this Web 2.0 phenomenon. What a great opportunity for those who are known for their love of organization - librarians!