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animals, minerals, or something else. A taxonomy is generally developed by
a speciic group with an idea in mind of what's going to be classiied. Every-
one who works on organizing the collection works within the taxonomy. For
example, the way the Library of Congress organizes its collection is a huge
taxonomy designed to encompass millions of subjects. It's created and regu-
lated by a speciic group. As a result, I can't approach the Library of Congress
and tell them I've created 500 subject headings about Kool and the Gang that
I want added to their taxonomy. Well, I could, but it wouldn't happen.
However, a folksonomy is much more organic than the eforts of the Library
of Congress. Like the Library of Congress, it's developed by a speciic group,
but it's the group that's using the collection and usually anybody can join
that group. Unlike the Library of Congress, it isn't developed and then
imposed upon a collection, but grows as more items are added to a col-
lection. Tags can have formal language, informal language, or words that
aren't in any dictionary you can ind.
his level of lexibility might drive a reference librarian crazy, but it's ideal
for the Internet. Ater all, the Web is not a library. Pages and data are being
added constantly, there's no card catalog that covers all the content, and
there's no governing body that approves each page as it's added to the Inter-
net and makes sure it's plunked into its proper classiication slot. If groups
of users who add to a collection can be involved in creating some kind of
structure for it, so much the better for the users and for you, the trapper.
tip
What kind of resources are organized with tags? it seems to have
started with online bookmarks, but now tags can be used to
search a variety of resources, from photos to blog entries. There's
even a meta-search engine for tagged items, as you'll discover a
little later on in this chapter.
the advantages of tags. . .
Tags have several advantages:
hey're created by people who are contributing to a collection of
resources. Because of this, they tend to be more relevant.
.
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