Social bookmarking tools- Hammond article

"Social Bookmarking tools" by Hammond, Tony; et al... (April 2005) discuss the history of bookmarking sites and the evolution to the tagging/folksonomy crazy we are now experiencing. I found this article to be very valuable in my understanding of the term 'folksonomy'. I have heard it many times but now feel like I truly understand the seemingly unorganized mess of tags found on sites like Flickr, etc...

I particularly like the following quote from the article,
"To anyone familiar with top-down classification schemes, this approach could look like a fearful muddle. But this doesn't mean that it is without value – after all, the Web itself appears from the outside as a somewhat messy affair (almost its defining characteristic). Rather, this is an altogether different – and, we would argue, complementary – form of classification. Compared to the traditional top-down approach, folksonomy data is much noisier but also more flexible, more abundant and far cheaper. Bear in mind also that the terms used are, by definition, the very terms that real users might be expected to use in future when searching for this information."

Before reading this article, I was not sure why someone would want to invest so much time 'tagging' items on the internet with seemingly no value added except to one's own collection of photos on Flickr for example. But, with more exposure to del.icio.us and other sites that rely on tagging, it is starting to make a little more sense. There is a level of organization to the randomness of folksonomy and natural language tags that a future librarian can come to appreciate. Not everyone has time to study the big red books for subject headings for goodness sake!

I am not completely sold on the idea that I should start spending my free time tagging away, but at least the concept is a little bit clearer! On the flip side, I do see myself using more Web 2.0 tools to organize my personal collection of bookmarks. Every time I go from work to home to school I have a hard time keeping all my favorites straight!