articles on tagging (help?)

I’m working on a literature review of tagging for a class. I am particularly interested in the collective action and cultural convergence aspects work.

I’ve been traipsing through various articles and blog entries on the topic and i’m wondering if folks know of good pieces that i’ve missed. I’m looking for articles that analyze tagging either through data, through situated comparisons or through philosophical hammering. They don’t have to be academic, but they do have to contribute something new. I’m not looking for how-tos or discussions of particular services. I’m also trying to focus on unique viewpoints as opposed to round-ups.

I would also be stoked if anyone knows of any information management literature on the cultural underpinnings of keywords and indexing or anything involving collective action and librarianship in metadata. How do differences across libraries or across countries get resolved?

Below is what i have so far. Any additions would be *very* much appreciated (and i promise to post what i write).

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37 thoughts on “articles on tagging (help?)”

  2. Gen Kanai

    Danah- I look forward to your future work on tags. Here’s a few others that you’ve missed.

    Google adds tags to the search history feature:
    http://google.blognewschannel.com/index.php/archives/2005/10/10/google-adds-tagging/

    del.icio.us tool collection
    http://pchere.blogspot.com/2005/02/absolutely-delicious-complete-tool.html

    tag search engine clusty
    http://clusty.com/

    tag search engine gataga (seems to have disappeared?)
    http://www.gataga.com/index.php

    Brian Del Vecchio on a tag-aware RSS reader
    http://drupal.hybernaut.com/bdv/tag-aware-rss-reader.html

    Dorothea on folksonomies
    http://cavlec.yarinareth.net/archives/2005/01/16/folksonomies-and-classification/

    Jon Udell on tags (this is one of the earliest mentions of tags as we know them now)
    http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/08/20/34OPstrategic_1.html

  6. paolo

    On Tag Clouds, Metric, Tag Sets and Power Laws
    http://blog.pietrosperoni.it/2005/05/25/tag-clouds-metric/

    Tagwebs, Flickr, and the Human Brain
    http://blumpy.org/tagwebs/
    [seems to be down now, use yahoo! or google cache]

    I think “Tag spa_m” is also an important topic you might want to cover but I don’t know of any good resource covering it. Anyway you might want to check the following ones or write a clever one yourself 😉
    (I didn’t read all the posts you are linking, someone of them deals with “tag spa_m”?)
    http://moloko.itc.it/paoloblog/archives/2005/01/29/what_is_tag_spam_or_better_tag_spam_exists.html
    http://www.micropersuasion.com/2005/07/yahoo_myweb_bec.html

    And, maybe you already checked but it might make sense to see what folkosomies services for research say about “folksonomy” 😉
    http://www.citeulike.org/tag/folksonomy
    http://www.connotea.org/tag/folksonomy

  14. Blogebrity

    Liners: Splogs, Pulse, Drunk Brunch

    Yesterday saw another EFF Drunk Brunch at Hyde Park’s Speakers’ Corner in London: ZDNet UK has the story; Flickr has the photos (and photos of past Drunk Brunches at Speakers’ Corner). Favorite shots: Rufus Pollock at the September Brunch; Suw…

  21. Mike

    We don’t have a paper yet but you might like to check out http://www.blinklist.com simply for the implementation on how we organize tags into a tag manager. I think what we have done may be of interest and is rather unique. For example, you can select favorite tags and look at your tags in many different ways.

    If you need some raw data for analysis let me know. We might be able to provide you some info.

    Mike

  23. Jay Fienberg

    (Started a list of suggestions here, but realized that I have too many to parse out of my files right now–let me know if you want more!)

    Tags stuck on trees (with pictures!)
    http://icite.net/blog/200506/tags_trees.html

    Clay Shirky’s Viewpoints are Overrated
    http://www.peterme.com/archives/000558.html

    Ontology is Overrated follow-up
    http://atomiq.org/archives/2005/08/ontology_is_overrated_followup.html

    semantic-web@w3.org‘s semantic view on tags
    http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/semantic-web/2005Mar

    (see threads on Tag ontology, Tag ontology RFC, Tag metaphor and Tag User Interface) and Richard Newman’s resources around the development of a Tag ontology:
    http://www.holygoat.co.uk/blog/entry/2005-03-23-2

    Picking Up Where Search Leaves Off
    http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_15/b3928112_mz063.htm

    Stefano Mazzocchi on Folksologies: de-idealizing ontologies
    http://www.betaversion.org/~stefano/linotype/news/85/

    How should the relationships between tags be defined, and by whom?
    http://blogs.msdn.com/alexbarn/archive/2005/04/10/406909.aspx

    Folksonomy: social classification
    http://atomiq.org/archives/2004/08/folksonomy_social_classification.html

    Stewart Butterfield on why tagging, not anything more complex, works well in Flickr:
    http://www.sylloge.com/personal/2004/08/folksonomy-social-classification-great.html

    IM dialog between Stewart and Joshua Shacter of del.icio.us
    http://sylloge.com/personal/2004/09/flickr-and-del.html

    Taxonomy of folksonomies
    http://www.salas.com/weblogs/archives/000608.html

  25. zephoria

    Wow – this is utterly fascinating!! Thank you sooo much for all of this. Here are some other references i’ve received via email:

    David Bearman and Jennifer Trant: Social Terminology Enhancement through Vernacular Engagement

    Prejudices and antipathies: a tract on the LC subject heads concerning people / by Sanford Berman

    Bowker, G. & Star, S.L. (1999). Sorting Things out: Classification and Its Consequences

    Other Peter Merholz articles:
    http://www.peterme.com/archives/000451.html
    http://www.peterme.com/archives/000412.html

  31. Pietro Speroni

    I see Paolo have already added my entry to the list. And although the entry he listed is the main one I wrote on tags, it’s not the only, and mor eimportantly not the one that deals specifically with cultural changes. More than working to understand that (which is quite mathemathically oriented!) you might want to directly read:
    tagclouds and cultural changes.

    Have fun.
    Pietro

  32. Brian Caruso

    D.J. Foskett 1980 “Thesaurus”
    In Kent, Lancour, Daily (eds) Encyc. of Library and Information Science, v30, pp.416-462 also found in
    Spark-Jones, Willet 1997 _Readings in Information Retrieval_

    If you are interested in past practices similar to tagging you might want to look at this article about the use of the thesaurus concept in information retrieval.

  34. Michael Gilbert

    You asked:

    > I would also be stoked if anyone knows of any information
    > management literature on the cultural underpinnings of
    > keywords and indexing or anything involving collective action
    > and librarianship in metadata. How do differences across
    > libraries or across countries get resolved?

    I recommend Sorting Things Out by Geoffrey Bowker & Susan Leigh Star. One of the key lessons of the book iis that the ongoing process of classification and reclassification, not just having a useful taxonomy, is itself one of the most powerful forms of knowledge building.

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