Classifying Fiction

For some time now, I have been interested in how we can ensure that both borrowers and staff can easily find books on shelves.  In my current library, I have worked with a number of colleagues to re-arrange and re-organise stock in order to make it easier for the borrower (and indeed the staff) to find what they want.  This has included putting genres at the end of the author run, rather than breaking up the sequence, and removing a paperback spinner that merely caused confusion (as stock could be on genre shelves, return shelves, fiction shelves or the spinner it could be quite time consuming for the borrower to find what they are looking for).  I’m so prone to suggesting changes, that staff almost expect me to suggest a new change every week (much to their annoyance!).

My current preoccupation is the removal of genre sections in preference to a single run of fiction shelved by author.  I am not a big fan of genre sections as they can (in my view) be confusing and rely heavily on borrowers who read by genre.  Many authors write in a variety of genres which means that, using a genre system, books by a particular author can be spread across the library.  This would be particularly annoying for readers who read by author (like myself).  Instead of simply finding the author on the A-Z shelving, you would have to know what genre someone has decided the text represents.  This is not exactly user-friendly in my opinion, particularly considering genres such as Crime and Adventure.  How do you decide what constitutes one and not the other?  How would you categorise an adventure story that has a crime at its heart?

Consequently, I have been mulling this over and trying to decide whether the removal of genre sections in public libraries is a good idea or not.  My view is quite probably influenced by the way I search for books, and whilst I may find it easier, there will be many who would loath the idea (the genre searchers).  Anyway, this may not be a bone of contention for too much longer.  If and when ebooks become a standard format, the issue of physical shelving will no longer be a concern as there will no longer need to be a decision about whether an item can be Adventure OR Crime, they can be both.  Suddenly, years of debate over the classification of fiction would be resolved in an instant (yeah right!).

So what should it be?  Genre distinctions?  Or simply shelved by author?  Would be interested to hear thoughts on this subject.

Incidentally, I have also set up (yet another) twtpoll relating to this matter.  You can vote here.

User-based tagging – creating chaos or a new order?

User-based tagging is not exactly a recent phenomenon.  Over the past few years it seems that practically every Web 2.0 innovation allows users to apply tags to items to add retrieval.  This has (somewhat predictably) caused a few in the library profession to throw their arms up in despair and claim that this ‘chaos’ will be the end of organised information retrieval as we know it.  This egalitarian system of organising information was always likely to upset the more elitist members of the library fraternity.  After all, what do they know about the subject matter of a particular source of information?  No, it is best left to the ‘professionals’.  But to what extent is this an accurate reflection of the use of tags by the general public?

There are a certain amount of limitations regarding the use of tags to index an item.  For example, there is a certain amount of inconsistency regarding the application of tags.  Take a typical set of tags on Delicious for example.  An article on the Library of Congress may be tagged in several ways:

• LOC
• Library_of_Congress
• libraryofcongress

Whilst all these tags may be appropriate for the individual, the lack of consistency does cause problems for other users.  A user searching for items on any one of these terms will miss any items tagged with any of the other terms.  Clearly with the possibility of such a high degree of ‘misses’, it cannot be described as a foolproof system by any means.

There are also problems when it comes to homonyms.  Take, for example, the word ‘bow’.  This can be used to refer to the implement used to fire arrows, as well as a decoration on a present.  Sticking with Delicious, should the user tap in ‘bow’ as a search term, they would be presented with list of links related to either medieval weaponry or decoration – two very different subjects with very different audiences! However, using Delicious, it should be possible to select an additional tag that will narrow the search down, although this is still likely to miss out relevant materials.

Although there are some issues with consistency, when tagging habits are analysed the picture isn’t nearly as chaotic as one would expect.  I have recently spent some time looking at such habits, and was interested to discover that there is a high level of  commonality between users tags.  Take an article by Peter Merholz entitled ‘Metadata for the masses’.  At time of analysing tagging habits related to this item, it was bookmarked by 56 members. Despite there being 61 different tags applied to the item, there was a high level of agreement between users regarding the ‘aboutness’ of the article.  As you can see from the chart below, after the first three most popular tags there is a big drop-off in numbers.

In fact, should the third and fourth tags be combined (the latter is the plural form of the former) there is an even bigger drop-off.  Furthermore, it appears that the first three tags (four if ‘folksonomies’ was incorporated) were applied by around 50% of those that tagged the item.  This suggests that, despite popular conception, agreement can be reached regarding the ‘aboutness’ of a document without the guidance of an all knowing professional.

Delicious tags for 'Metadata for the masses'

In his article, Merholz explains why he believes user-based tagging could be beneficial for organising information:

The potential benefits of free tagging should encourage practitioners to address such shortcomings [caused by inconsistencies in tagging]. In looking for a real-world analog, I thought of the foot-worn paths that appear in a landscape over time. Called “desire lines,” these trails demonstrate how a landscape’s users choose to move, which is often not on the paved paths. A smart landscape designer will let wanderers create paths through use, and then pave the emerging walkways, ensuring optimal utility.

I think this is exactly why user-based tagging could become a useful tool.  Allowing users to freely create ‘paths’ to information would ensure that eventually a commonality will emerge.  Once this commonality has emerged it should be easier to develop a controlled language that is truly in the words of the user (rather than in the remote terminology of the ‘information professional’), making information more accessible to the average user.  Although user-based tagging does have its limitations, there is great potential there to organise large amounts of information – particularly in terms of the internet.  Ultimately our greatest concern should be making information easily accessible for the average user.  By dispensing with terminology that we are in control of and handing over a degree of control to the ‘masses’, the potential is there to attain this goal and ensure that a system that is user-friendly and relevant to the end-user emerges.

Bookmarking Websites with Delicious

I have long found that the Favourites folder on IE was not exactly the most convenient way of storing websites for future reference.  I often found that I had to go through my folders trying to find the actual link I required, all the time wondering what it was called and what folder I had actually put it in.  Many a time I eventually gave in and ended up trying to search for the site again using Google – an infuriating and wasteful way of finding that elusive website.  The need to find an alternative became even more pressing when I started my course, as I knew I would be bookmarking a lot of material.  It was at this point I finally plunged for Delicious.

I have to admit, I came to Delicious a little late.  It was already widely used by the time I came round to finally signing up for an account.  However, no sooner had I joined than I wished that I had signed up for an account a long time ago.  Quite frankly, once you have signed up for a Delicious account, you wonder why you have put up with IE Favourites for so long.  So, what actually is Delicious?  How does it work?  What are the benefits of using it as your library of bookmarks?

Once you sign up for an account with Delicious, you have the option to download a toolbar direct to your browser.  After downloading, you can simply add a website to your Delicious links at the press of a button.  Nice and simple.  The downloaded toolbar also has a number of other neat features, like a list of your most recent bookmarked items  and the ability to see your links in a sidebar.  The thing that really stands out on Delicious, is the ability to add tags to items that are bookmarked to your account.  This enables the user to retrieve links quickly and easily.  The tags can either be simple one word tags, or word combinations using ‘_’ or ‘-’.  When searching for a specific tag, you can simply click on a tag to present a list of items tagged with that specific term.  You can then drill down even further by adding another tag into the mix.  So, for example, you may click on the tag ‘football’ and get a list of items related to football.  You may then decide that you want to find the links that are related to Italian football, so you would just click on the tag ‘Italy’.  You would then be presented with all the links that have been tagged with the terms ‘football’ and ‘Italy’ (which should hopefully relate to both these tags).  This is really handy for finding items quickly and efficiently.  Unlike IE folders, you don’t have to indulge in a fruitless search through a sea of links and folders that give you very few clues about what they relate to.  You can even add a short description on Delicious to make it even easier to find the right item.

There is also the ability to browse through tags that have been applied by other users in order to find items that might also be useful for future reference.  And, if you discover a fellow account holder with similar interests, you can add them to your network and keep up-to-date with what they are bookmarking.  As a result, it is possible to not only organise your bookmarks, but also to discover new resources that may not have encountered before.  Delicious enables a degree of knowledge sharing not previously possible on the internet.

There have been arguments amongst some that the idea of individuals tagging items would be a nightmare for someone wanting to find a particular resource.  After all, if everyone applied there own tags to an individual bookmark, there would be chaos, right?  How could you guarantee that you could find all the weblinks that you were after if there is no consistency in the way users ‘tag’ their items?  Well, this isn’t as much as a problem as you might think.  It turns out there is a high level of consistency to tagging the more people save a particular bookmark.

This consistency is rather helped by the fact that Delicious suggests tags that may be appropriate for the item that you have bookmarked.  These suggestions tend to be the most popular tags which therefore helps to standardise the cataloguing of weblinks.  Even if these are ignored, however, there is still some degree of consistency.  Generally speaking, there is a tendency for people to tag things in a similar way.  As more people tag an item, a commonality amongst tags starts to emerge.  Although there is a variety in the number of tags that are applied, there does tend to be a small number of tags that will consistently appear across all users.  This commonality suggests that user-based tagging is not as anarchic as one might be lead to believe.  In fact, as Merholz has argued, such systems are rather like ‘desire lines’ that emerge over time in a landscape.  Once it becomes clear that a commonality has developed amongst users tags, it is easy to direct them to the appropriate tag (rather like a controlled vocabulary).  Considering the rapid growth of the information that is available on the internet, such a system is very useful indeed.

In short, I would highly recommend that if you haven’t already got an account with Delicious to organise your bookmarks, you should set one up as soon as possible.  It has numerous benefits when compared to other methods of organising your favourites (like IE folders), not least the ease of access.  And despite some concerns about the ability for everyone to freely apply tags to their bookmarks, the fact that a degree of commonality emerges suggests that these fears are unfounded.  Considering that there are now well over one trillion unique urls, organising content for retrieval is absolutely vital.

Bookmarking Favourites

Finding the right resource to resolve a query at the enquiry desk can sometimes be a tricky affair, particularly if the methods for bookmarking aren’t exactly helpful.  Members of staff who are faced with queries that require access to a specific website are often left to flounder as they root around various sub-folders amongst their Favourites bookmarks on Internet Explorer.  For inexperienced members of staff, this can be an exasperating situation.  However, there are a variety of tools that are available to efficiently direct members of staff to appropriate internet resources.

Perhaps the most widely used bookmarking tool is Delicious.  For a long time, I was oblivious to what Delicious could actually do.  I saw the links at the bottom of various pages, but had no idea as to the value of the tool itself.  Eventually I decided to ‘take the plunge’ and see what it has to offer.  There are certainly a number of advantages for using Delicious in the context of an enquiry desk.  Firstly, there is the ability to tag links with subject headings.  Provided the links are tagged properly (and that is the key), it can inform the user of exactly what information is contained on that link.  This has a massive advantage over folders on your browser as, although they indicate what site they link to, they do not reveal what information these sites contain.  From an enquiry desk perspective, this is invaluable.  Staff are no longer required to plough through a variety of links before they find what they want, by clicking on an appropriate tag, they can find the information they want far quicker.  This means better service delivery as the information is located faster, and the user doesn’t have to deal with an increasingly frustrated member of staff, desperately trying to find the right information.

An additional benefit to Delicious is the fact that links can be viewed on any computer.  Should I see a link at home that I think might be valuable in an enquiry desk context, I can simply add it to my account and then visit the site at work should I have the appropriate query.  Likewise, should I be at work and discover a useful website, I can then access it at home at a later date.  In terms of public libraries, this is even more useful as different libraries across the same authority can add links that they find useful and thus share them with members of staff in other libraries.  This also means that should members of staff have a particular expertise in one subject area (in terms of knowledge of useful internet resources), that expertise can be shared with people throughout the authority.  A massive advantage to effective service delivery.

Although there are a number of benefits to this form of organising internet links, it is not without its problems.  User tagging is a very useful tool, as long as everyone tagged links in the same way.  What might be seen as an obvious tag for one member of staff, might not be so obvious for another.  As a result, members of staff might overlook important resources that can deal with the query and will consequently be no better off than using the old-fashioned method of bookmarking.  This is perhaps the biggest problem in allowing members of staff to add their own links and tag them as they see fit.  Without some form of central control, there would be inconsistency which would lead to inefficiency.  A hundred members of staff means a hundred different ways to tag one item.  Take these two photos from FlickR, both of roughly the same subject:

The first photo is tagged as follows:

portugal holiday 2008 lisbon 25deAbrilBridge tagus suspension

The second is tagged:

25deAbrilBridge lisbon portugal suspensionbridge cristo-rei rivertagus almada franciscofrancodesousa antoniolino

As you can see, there are a number of subtle differences in  how the two are tagged.   The first one uses the tag ‘suspension’ whilst the second uses ‘suspensionbridge’.  Clearly in the case of the first set of tags, care will need to be taken when searching.  Someone looking for ‘suspension bridges’ will obviously not retrieve this image.  Likewise, if someone was looking to find examples of work by Francisco Franco de Sousa, they would also miss the first image.

Taking all of this into account, imagine the problems that would occur if members of staff each tagged links themselves, the problems would be multiplied many times over.  As a result, the utilisation of Delicious would lose its advantage over folders stored on the browser.  That said, if it was used in a controlled manner, Delicious could be a very useful resource for public library enquiry desks and a welcome aid to those less-comfortable in dealing with internet based queries.

Catalogue Solutions

So, as you may be aware, I have been spending some time working on a solution to our un-catalogued items.  Well, I have had to pass on my work to someone a bit higher up the ladder (guess I should have done that before I had done so much work on it!!), who is going to have a look at what I have been doing and see if it is either useful or an avenue worth exploring.  Hopefully I will get the all clear to continue as I think it could be a really useful resource.  If not, well, it’s back to the drawing board I guess!!

Cataloguing on a Wiki

As I noted on a previous post, I have been working on solving a few practical problems at work.  As part of my drive to catalogue materials that are not on our library management system, I have been adding our collection of maps onto a wiki I have set-up at Zoho.  Up until now, the maps have been catalogued on a spreadsheet several pages long.  This meant that searching for a specific map was laborious to say the least.  To make the search process easier I split the maps up in to different areas and gave each area its own wiki page.  This meant that when a search was conducted, it would at least narrow it down to a general area.  However, the process hasn’t been without its blips.

The main problem has been with the hit-and-miss nature of the search engine.  When entering one particular search term, the engine threw up no results, even though I knew the term was in the database.  Thankfully, the guys at Zoho have been very helpful.  After encountering the problem, I decided to get in touch with a member of the team.  Impressively, they got back to me the very next day and said they would look into it.  It turned out there was a fault with the software and they assured me that they would rectify it.  They also asked of there were any features that would make the service easier to use.  I suggested that it would be useful if when a search is conducted, instead of just directing you to the page, the search terms could be highlighted on the wiki page.  Again I got an email the very next day, and they said they would look into it.  Impressive service!

I am really hopeful that this will make it easier for members of staff to use and I am hoping to build it into a one-stop shop for help with reference queries.  It will provide a wealth of information specific to our library that is easily searchable.  For example, a page would be created with copyright information on maps so that (as inevitably happens) when members of staff struggle to remember the technicalities of copyright laws, they can find the information via a simple search engine on the database.  It will take a lot of time to get to this stage, but I am confident that using a wiki in this way will make it much easier for staff to provide a quality service and, after all, that is what we should be aiming for.

Replacing Card Catalogues

Our library has a wide range of local studies materials (newspaper cuttings, maps, microfiche etc etc) and I have recently been racking my brains to come up with a way for staff to find relevant material quickly and efficiently.  Unlike our book stock, the vast majority of these materials are not on our OPAC and are therefore difficult for inexperienced staff to find.  Consequently, there is an over reliance on more experienced members of staff who know exactly where everything is (I am as guilty of pestering them as anyone!).  The ultimate objective is to eliminate this problem and make everything easy to access to enable even the most inexperienced members of staff to deal with the more complex queries we face.

With that in mind, I have been experimenting with a Zoho wiki to enter details of the materials we have. The idea is that, once everything is added, members of staff will be able to conduct a search and then find all the materials we have on that search term.   By clicking on a search result, the member of staff would be directed to exactly where the material would be kept.  At this moment in time I am not sure how useful (or user friendly) this system will be, but I would be interested in hearing alternatives.  As it needs to be set up at a local level, the option of bells and whistles databases and catalogues is out of the question.  It needs to be free and it needs to be user friendly.  If anyone has any ideas, drop a line in the comments box.  Or else, I will just persevere with the wiki (and that looks like a lot of work at the moment!!).