Wiki world

I have to confess I think Wikipedia is amazing. I am aware of the problems, I know it is unreliable or at worst downright inaccurate; it will never replace proper research. But it is also gives a list of past Neighbours characters, with biographies, which in my book means it can't be all bad. It is also so ubiquitous that I have to say I've ignored the possibilities of other types of wikis, although I have used them successfully for work. The graduate trainees have a wiki on CamTools to manage the Catalog website, this works well: we keep an up-to-date rota and list of changes that need to be made, and a list of who's done what each week.

I was excited to read about the Library Routes Project on this week's Cam23 blog as I hadn't heard about it before. Reading about other librarians' career histories is really interesting for me as someone about to start working towards my library school qualification. I will definitely be exploring this in more detail! Also the wiki format seems part of its success; people provide their own information, hearing the many different voices is what makes it so interesting.

Also the different things wikis could be used for had never really occurred to me before. I really like intranets: I think it is often useful for staff to be able to access more detailed information that wouldn't be put on a library's main site, and a wiki could so easily be set up for this purpose and could be kept up to date easily. I can see a lot of potential for using wikis when you want to create long running, constantly changing and collaborative resources and projects.

You have been tagged

I was really interested reading Clay Shirky's piece about tagging and classification as I'll be learning classification on my LIS Masters next year and I so it was interesting reading a discussion about it.

Firstly I would say tagging (in the Shirky sense, used on Flickr) is something I feel is definitely useful - the internet is anarchic and user defined - tags reflect this. And like the internet tagging can be both brilliant and awful because of this anarchy. Looking at the tag cloud on Flickr for example

it's easy to see what people like taking photos of: weddings, parties and beaches, often using Nikon or Canon cameras. The tags become more useful when searching - a picture taken with a Canon camera of a wedding held on the beach for example would be the ultimate 'average' Flickr photo!

I don't quite see why Shirky is so determined to put this kind of organic tagging in opposition to more traditional library classification systems however - they are both categorising things but in different ways, and for different purposes. Library classification systems for physical libraries are there to make searching and
browsing easier - just as tags do on the internet. I would argue both types of classification - rigid and fluid - have their place.

I had flashbacks to the literary theory module in my degree and semiotics - words and definitions are difficult to pin down - different words can have different connotations to different people. Tagging reflects this:  if you're looking for something not recognised in more structured systems then a user defined tag allows flexibility. This multitude of meaning can also be incredibly problematic and frustrating if you want to find something specific quickly within a structure - this is why classification systems developed! I don't see any reason why the two approaches can't co-exist in organising information. Just like I feel I can quote Wikipedia and defend traditional classification systems!