Tag Clouds in the Library Catalog

Organizing books and materials used to be in the domain of professionally trained catalogers and indexers. Now, through Web 2.0, it is in the hands of everyday "folk." What are the implications of this trend for librarians? Also, for additional food for thought, go to your Delicious site and examine your list of tags. In your opinion, are these tags more or less helpful than traditional subject headings?

When I think of how out of control the tagging can become with every patron's opinions on tags, or those who find it humorous to be misleading or inappropriate in their choices, I fear that the librarians job could shift to a role of clean up control. Having to manage the tags in order to keep them from moving into complete chaos. I do personally, as a typical library patron and Google user prior to beginning my library courses, do see the need for the library catalog and search set up to be more user appropriate versus librarian appropriate. It is my opinion that many years ago it was in the curriculum how to properly search a library catalog, and these days there is so much material and information to be learned, this is one thing that has been slashed from curriculum. So instead of requiring society to conform as they have in the past, it is now on the library to conform to society. Which is more practical could be a long debate.
Are these tags more helpful than traditional subject headings? After taking my cataloging class with UNT and creating my MARC records I would have to agree that the tags could be more helpful because they make sense and would fall into street language. I had difficulty sometimes choosing the correct subject headings because in my mind there wasn't a match up. Sometimes more is better, and then other times more gets out of hand. It will definitely be interesting to see how it all pans out.

"The Machine is Us/Using Us"

The title of the video that you were asked to view this week is "Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/Using Us." Referencing what you have learned about Web 2.0 through the readings in the Courtney text and through watching the video, why do you think that Professor Wesch gave this title to the video?

I believe this question could be answered even prior to reading Chapter 1 in the Courtney textbook or watching the video. When thinking about the internet it was something created by man and in its continuous growth continues to grow and develop based on decisions and creations by users, people. On the flip side we can only do with the internet what is made available to us, so in that way it dictates how we use it. In addition the internet offers so much many of us have become very reliant on it, as we are as distance learners.

One example from the Courtney text that I think shows both sides is from page 2 to 3: "In fact, they view their users as extensions of the development team. The programmers regularly put out new features and evaluate how web users make use of them. If the new features get a lot of use, they are offered more broadly, if they get little use, the new features are pulled for revision or discarded altogether." There are people on both sides of this explanation making "The Machine Us." But those people are also manipulating "the machine" and viewing how users go about using the features and adapting from that information, which for me is "The Machine Using Us."