Tagging - What & Why

What
Tagging is a method of organization - nothing more, nothing less. It's just a way for you to organize your pictures (Flickr), bookmarks (del.icio.us) and blog posts (blogger). It's similar to organization with folders, but instead of putting a picture in a folder, you are attaching a tag (or label) to the picture. This means that instead of having a picture that may cover several different subjects in one folder, you can "tag" that picture with several different tags and find it using any one of them.

Tagging is also social. When you tag a picture in Flickr, you are giving others a way to find that picture. You can do a search at Flickr for all pictures tagged "library" and find all kinds of images of libraries, inside of libraries, around libraries or of personal book/movie/dvd libraries. Whatever anyone decided fit the label of "library" will show up in a search. This also means that once you tag an image with a particular tag/label you can find other images that use that same tag.

Why
Why tag items?

• To make them easy to find again - organization!
• To make them easy for others to find - sharing!
  

Tagging - Where

Where?

• Flickr
• MRRL's photos - those tagged with "Linn" show up on the Osage County homepage (http://www.mrrl.org/osage/)
• del.icio.us
• MRRL's reference links (http://del.icio.us/mrrl?setcount=25)
  
• blogger (categories)
• Blogger doesn't have real categories like other blog software does, but it does allow labeling (tagging) for individual posts that can work like categories
• some library catalogs - AADL
• Tag books for others to find in the catalog
• Makes more sense than Library of Congress subject headings to some people

Tagging - How

How - General
Enter keywords into a text field offered by the site.

How - Specific
Del.icio.us - enter keywords separated by a space. This means that no multiple word tags are allowed. Use CamelCase or underscores (_) to separate words.
Flickr - enter keywords using quotation marks to connect phrases, eg. "New York City" would be one keyword. Multiple word tags are acceptable - this makes it harder to choose a single tag that everyone can agree on for a specific idea.

Tagging In del.icio.us

Tag for yourself
Tagging in del.icio.us offers you the chance to organize bookmarks so that they make sense to you. It's more efficient than the folders that are offered by browsers because you can tag one single bookmark with several "labels" and find that bookmark through any of those tags.

Tag for others
Many people will tag bookmarks in del.icio.us so that not only they, but other del.icio.us users will be able to find them.

Use others' tags