Steve Ely

Tag this item? Not so much.

A few months ago I had occasion to compare the way different libraries catalog the same book and so was opening from WorldCat some records in catalogs I’d probably never otherwise mess with.  One of those catalogs was that of Kansas State University.  Examining the holdings record for the book, I was intrigued to see a link for Del.icio.us there.  I was, moreover, simultaneously delighted and annoyed to see their effort to integrate Web 2.0 functionality with the OPAC.

Following the MARC fields, there are a couple of interesting lines. “Tag this item,” it says, with the Del.icio.us icon and a colon followed by the word del.icio.us, linking to a page to directly post the item to the user’s bookmarks.  And this is what annoys me.  I presume by “this item,” they mean the holding record we’re currently viewing when we read that.  The link they give us doesn’t (nor does Del.icio.us itself ever) give us any way to tag the actual holdings record.  What it does give us is simply an easy way to create a bookmark for the web page of the holdings record. All that we can then tag is the Del.icio.us bookmark record we create.

This is closely tied to the line that follows it, reading “Link to this item: permalink, right click to copy.”  A lot of catalogs might not have convenient permalinks for their holdings records, so that’s worth something right there.  (In fact, I took advantage and linked to it in the first paragraph above.)  But once they’ve given us that, the ability to create a bookmark in Del.icio.us is pretty unremarkable.  I can bookmark any web page with a static URL.

I’m not typing all this to complain that their innovation is insufficiently innovative, though.  I’m complaining that their presentation of it is misleading.  They’re probably confused themselves about the concepts.  If it simply said “Bookmark this item,” I’d have no complaints at all here.  I’d be rather pleased, if not all that impressed.  But if by “this item” they do indeed mean the holdings record (as their use of “this item” with the permalink implies), they’re very much implying we can tag that holdings records.

This false suggestion only has the effect of pointing out what you can’t do with that record because the capability does exist elsewhere.  In the OPAC of the Ann Arbor District Library in Michigan, users can indeed tag the records.  Not just bookmark them and tag those bookmarks but actually put tags on the holdings records themselves.  It’s one of the few catalogs I know of that’s actually implemented this functionality.

Now, it’s not as if I think social tagging is necessary in OPACs generally, let alone in academic libraries’ OPACs.  I do think it’s a great feature and adds value, but the lack of it is totally normal.   My point here is partly this:   It’s no good promoting features you don’t really have.  It just makes you look bad when you don’t need to.

Mostly, my point is this:  Let’s be clear about the difference between tagging and bookmarking.  Because bookmarking something effectively in Del.icio.us tends to entail tagging, it’s easy to get mixed up and think of the bookmarking as tagging.   But the terms are not synonymous, and when you mix them up, you just end up making promises you can’t keep.   Creating a record in Del.icio.us that points to a web page (such as the page for a library catalog holdings record) is bookmarking that page.   Tagging, whether on a Del.icio.us bookmark or on an OPAC holdings record, such as at the AADL, is adding metadata to that record.  This is a difference we ought to be able to keep straight, as librarians and as users of social bookmarking.

At least they’re trying.