The implications of organizing by everyday "folk" for librarians, is that librarians must stay in touch with the real world and embrace change. I feel this will be easier for the newer, younger librarians. We are used to using tags and desire to search the full text of resources instead of being limited to the title and topic searches. So often what we need to know is found by more specific search of the whole unit instead of just what the author or the cataloger decided what was important in the search. Organizing through Web 2.0, is a collaborative effort, it is looking at the resources through multiple eyes and seeing the bigger picture. When users tag or blog about what they find, are interested in or are reading, this connects to other users instead of confining them to the view of boring card catalog searches that only includes a blurb of what is available. I like the idea of Courtney (2007), when she discusses relevancy ranking, clean interfaces and advance search opotions. When Google gives you search options, it ranks them in order of what previous users have deemed as most useful. Library catalogs need to be clean, useful and inviting. Users should not have to search through several links before being able to find what they were looking for. The advanced search options make the users more successful and less frustrated in their searches. Yesterday I was looking for a crochet pattern. I knew what I was looking for, but if I had to rely on the simple search, I would have had to scroll through 1500 patterns before possibly finding the one I wanted. Instead, the advanced search allowed me to look at crochet, accessories, women, hat and it narrowed my search down to 13. Amazing! How many more library patrons would we have if we made it that simple for them?
I find the tags in Delicious very useful. Not only can I tag what is important and useful to me, I can search by tags to find other sites that librarians have found useful for their lessons. If I use the tag digital storytelling and search, it brought up links for educational uses of and also gave me new links and resources to experience other sites for digital storytelling activities.
When putting organization in the hands of the ordinary folks, I believe there is power. There is no way that one person, one cataloger could tag and organize all the information availabe at this moment, much less with the rate that the online information is growing.
Resources:
Courtney, N. (2007). Library 2.0 and beyond: innovative technologies and tomorrow's user. Westport, Conn.: Libraries Unlimited.
Delicious. (n.d.). Delicious. Retrieved July 26, 2011, from http://delicious.com
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