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Articles by Bill Ives
Tagging, or social bookmarking, emerged in the internet this past year through popular sites like del.icio.us and Flickr. It allows people to put metadata (labels) on content, primarily internet links in the case of del.icio.us and photos at Flickr. Tagging is the “offspring” of keywords, but with some new twists. Anyone can tag anything any way they want; there is no agreed-upon or imposed taxonomy. In addition, multiple tags to the same object allow bookmarks to belong to more than one category, bypassing a limitation of the traditional hierarchically organized category systems.
There are other differences between tagging and conventional classification. Readers—not just writers and librarians—get to tag. The new tagging systems are web-based, so they can become accessible to all, and for these two reasons tagging becomes social. This social quality also allows taxonomies to be built from the ground up by users, rather than be determined by designated experts.
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