Tag, you’re it!*

Danbury Library, CT, USA
Home: http://danburylibrary.org/
Blog: http://danburylibrary.org/blog/reading/
Myspace page: http://profile.myspace.com/danburylibrary
Catalogue: http://cat.danburylibrary.org/

Danbury Library was the first library to implement LibraryThing for Libraries, they went live in May 2007.

Danbury Library announced the new features on their Library Blog, and LibraryThing announced the implementation on their Thingology Blog.

I’ll use this library as an example of using tags in library catalogues.

When you look at the record for a book in the Danbury Library catalogue, you see the standard information: author, title, publisher, and subject. LibraryThing for Libraries adds an additional section, Tags.

Tags are words or phrases assigned to a book by users, in this case by LibraryThing users. When you look at a book in the Danbury Library catalogue, you get to see the most common tags users have provided for that book. The tags are arranged in a cloud, which means they are in alphabetical order, with the size of the tag font indicating how often that tag is given to that book.

For example, look at the catalogue record for The Remorseful Day, by Colin Dexter.

The most commonly used tags are the largest: crime, Inspector Morse, morse, and detective. A quick glance at the tag cloud gives you an idea of what the book is about. Also, the tag Inspector Morse provides access to a list of all the books in the Inspector Morse series, information which is very, very useful, and often hard to find in library catalogues.

When you click on a tag, it opens the Tag Browser, and displays three things:

• A list of the other books in the library that also have that tag, when you click on a book title, it opens the catalogue record for that book
• The tag cloud for the book you were looking at, when you click on a tag, it displays the list of books that have that tag.
• A list of related tags - tags that are used on the same books as the tag you clicked on, again click on a tag to display the list of books with that tag

Alas for usability, one of the most exciting features of LTfL is buried in the tag browser. There is a Tag search that will search all of the tags that have been assigned to books in the library. For example, if you search for ’steam punk’, the tag browser will display the list of books with this tag, and a list of related tags. This is a powerful way to locate books on topics that are not covered by standard subject headings - genre types such as “cozy mystery”, “chick lit” and “space opera” are a good examples.

Good stuff

• Tags can give you a better summary of a books content, as they’re not as restricted.
• Tags can use natural language, might be more relevant than the standard subject.
• Tags can let you focus your browsing to a very specific area.
• Tags give you an idea of what a wide community think of a book.

Kate Sheehan (loosecannonglibrarian.net) of Danbury Library describes the implementation of LibraryThing into their catalogue in her presentation LibraryThing for Libraries: The OPAC as Social Butterfly. She describes LTfL as “A way to add innovative features without paying through the nose.” The implementation was painless, and the results good - the staff like it for reader’s advisory, and the patrons love it (once someone points it out to them!) The NELA Conference Blog has notes about the questions asked at her presentation.

Could be Better Stuff

• Tags are not always splendid (e.g. the tag ‘flat’ is likely a location rather than a description of a book).
• You can’t search for them in keyword searches, the tag search is separate and deeply buried.
• Users might get confused between the ‘official’ subject tags and the LT tags.
• You can’t add or edit tags in the catalogue, you have to go to LT, have an account, and then have a copy of the book in your personal library before you can update tags for that book.

In future blog posts, I’ll talk about the lists of Other editions and Similar books.

* Please note that this is an obligatory title for posts about social tagging, and I wanted to et it out of the way early in the piece.