Competency 5: Tagging

In our course work we are exploring the use of tagging as an informal means to create metadata for the Worldwide Web.

After searching LibraryThing for a resource that ties in with my blog topic of Library 2.0 and the Academic Library, I found Cathy De Rosa's OCLC report on College Students' Perceptions of Libraries And Information Resources from 2006. The work examines the information-seeking habits and preferences of international college students and serves as a companion piece to the December 2005 OCLC Perceptions of Libraries and Information Resources report.

It was exciting to see tagging in action: I located the resource on LibraryThing because other ordinary people as I am had informally tagged the resource with "library2.0," and I added the tag of "academic" for the level of libraries I'm interested in. Pretty cool.

The "cloud" of tags that have been
been assigned to De Rosa's report is represented by this cut-and-paste graphic to the right. Note that the greater the number of times a term has been assigned to the title, the larger, bolder the tag appears in the cloud. (You can see this cloud for yourself, and updated in real-time, at http://www.librarything.com/work/2722553.)

(I went to Amazon and found no one had tagged this report, so I started the page off with my own two, Library2.0 and academic. It's spreading.)
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Competency 4: displaying a pertinent RSS Feed

Competency 4 for the purposes of my course involves selecting an RSS feed relevant to this blog's dual theme of Library 2.0 and the academic library and then displaying that feed on this blog.

One blog I referred to earlier on this site was that of Suzanne Chapman, the interface and user testing specialist for the University of Michigan Library’s Digital Library Production Service. She maintains a blog on a wide range of topics that involve technology, user services, librarianship at the academic level and being a person who loves the library world.

The web site is called Userslib.com, and I think you'll enjoy watching and delving into some of her posts. (Click on the link for the name of her blog to go see what's up.)

I particularly like the relevant information she gives on the U of Michigan's efforts to more fully engage the user population. She's trying some of the most-talked about practices in Library 2.0, and it's interesting to see what she reports in response to the various attempts.

Note: due to the unfortunate layout of this (I think) attractive blog template, the Newsfeed must remain towards the top of the blog, separated from this post about the competency. It's right up there for you to see, and that's good. But this post about the rationale and competency may be less obvious. Good luck.

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