Search results

1 – 10 of over 3000
Article
Publication date: 1 June 2006

George Macgregor and Emma McCulloch

The purpose of the paper is to provide an overview of the collaborative tagging phenomenon and explore some of the reasons for its emergence.

6542

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of the paper is to provide an overview of the collaborative tagging phenomenon and explore some of the reasons for its emergence.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper reviews the related literature and discusses some of the problems associated with, and the potential of, collaborative tagging approaches for knowledge organisation and general resource discovery. A definition of controlled vocabularies is proposed and used to assess the efficacy of collaborative tagging. An exposition of the collaborative tagging model is provided and a review of the major contributions to the tagging literature is presented.

Findings

There are numerous difficulties with collaborative tagging systems (e.g. low precision, lack of collocation, etc.) that originate from the absence of properties that characterise controlled vocabularies. However, such systems can not be dismissed. Librarians and information professionals have lessons to learn from the interactive and social aspects exemplified by collaborative tagging systems, as well as their success in engaging users with information management. The future co‐existence of controlled vocabularies and collaborative tagging is predicted, with each appropriate for use within distinct information contexts: formal and informal.

Research limitations/implications

Librarians and information professional researchers should be playing a leading role in research aimed at assessing the efficacy of collaborative tagging in relation to information storage, organisation, and retrieval, and to influence the future development of collaborative tagging systems.

Practical implications

The paper indicates clear areas where digital libraries and repositories could innovate in order to better engage users with information.

Originality/value

At time of writing there were no literature reviews summarising the main contributions to the collaborative tagging research or debate.

Details

Library Review, vol. 55 no. 5
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0024-2535

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 16 October 2009

Kwan Yi and Lois Mai Chan

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the linking of a folksonomy (user vocabulary) and LCSH (controlled vocabulary) on the basis of word matching, for the potential use of…

4661

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the linking of a folksonomy (user vocabulary) and LCSH (controlled vocabulary) on the basis of word matching, for the potential use of LCSH in bringing order to folksonomies.

Design/methodology/approach

A selected sample of a folksonomy from a popular collaborative tagging system, Delicious, was word‐matched with LCSH. LCSH was transformed into a tree structure called an LCSH tree for the matching. A close examination was conducted on the characteristics of folksonomies, the overlap of folksonomies with LCSH, and the distribution of folksonomies over the LCSH tree.

Findings

The experimental results showed that the total proportion of tags being matched with LC subject headings constituted approximately two‐thirds of all tags involved, with an additional 10 percent of the remaining tags having potential matches. A number of barriers for the linking as well as two areas in need of improving the matching are identified and described. Three important tag distribution patterns over the LCSH tree were identified and supported: skewedness, multifacet, and Zipfian‐pattern.

Research limitations/implications

The results of the study can be adopted for the development of innovative methods of mapping between folksonomy and LCSH, which directly contributes to effective access and retrieval of tagged web resources and to the integration of multiple information repositories based on the two vocabularies.

Practical implications

The linking of controlled vocabularies can be applicable to enhance information retrieval capability within collaborative tagging systems as well as across various tagging system information depositories and bibliographic databases.

Originality/value

This is among frontier works that examines the potential of linking a folksonomy, extracted from a collaborative tagging system, to an authority‐maintained subject heading system. It provides exploratory data to support further advanced mapping methods for linking the two vocabularies.

Details

Journal of Documentation, vol. 65 no. 6
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0022-0418

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 9 August 2011

Min Gyo Chung, Taehyung (George) Wang and Phillip C.‐Y. Sheu

Video summarisation is one of the most active fields in content‐based video retrieval research. A new video summarisation scheme is proposed by this paper based on socially…

Abstract

Purpose

Video summarisation is one of the most active fields in content‐based video retrieval research. A new video summarisation scheme is proposed by this paper based on socially generated temporal tags.

Design/methodology/approach

To capture users' collaborative tagging activities the proposed scheme maintains video bookmarks, which contain some temporal or positional information about videos, such as relative time codes or byte offsets. For each video all the video bookmarks collected from users are then statistically analysed in order to extract some meaningful key frames (the video equivalent of keywords), which collectively constitute the summary of the video.

Findings

Compared with traditional video summarisation methods that use low‐level audio‐visual features, the proposed method is based on users' high‐level collaborative activities, and thus can produce semantically more important summaries than existing methods.

Research limitations/implications

It is assumed that the video frames around the bookmarks inserted by users are informative and representative, and therefore can be used as good sources for summarising videos.

Originality/value

Folksonomy, commonly called collaborative tagging, is a Web 2.0 method for users to freely annotate shared information resources with keywords. It has mostly been used for collaboratively tagging photos (Flickr), web site bookmarks (Del.icio.us), or blog posts (Technorati), but has never been applied to the field of automatic video summarisation. It is believed that this is the first attempt to utilise users' high‐level collaborative tagging activities, instead of low‐level audio‐visual features, for video summarisation.

Details

Online Information Review, vol. 35 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1468-4527

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 22 August 2011

Rose Marie Santini

This paper aims to discuss how collaborative classification works in online music information retrieval systems and its impacts on the construction, fixation and orientation of…

2168

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to discuss how collaborative classification works in online music information retrieval systems and its impacts on the construction, fixation and orientation of the social uses of popular music on the internet.

Design/methodology/approach

Using a comparative method, the paper examines the logic behind music classification in Recommender Systems by studying the case of Last.fm, one of the most popular web sites of this type on the web. Data collected about users' ritual classifications are compared with the classification used by the music industry, represented by the AllMusic web site.

Findings

The paper identifies the differences between the criteria used for the collaborative classification of popular music, which is defined by users, and the traditional standards of commercial classification, used by the cultural industries, and discusses why commercial and non‐commercial classification methods vary.

Practical implications

Collaborative ritual classification reveals a shift in the demand for cultural information that may affect the way in which this demand is organized, as well as the classification criteria for works on the digital music market.

Social implications

Collective creation of a music classification in recommender systems represents a new model of cultural mediation that might change the way of building new uses, tastes and patterns of musical consumption in online environments.

Originality/value

The paper highlights the way in which the classification process might influence the behavior of the users of music information retrieval systems, and vice versa.

Details

OCLC Systems & Services: International digital library perspectives, vol. 27 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1065-075X

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 23 February 2010

Maayan Zhitomirsky‐Geffet, Judit Bar‐Ilan, Yitzchak Miller and Snunith Shoham

The purpose of this paper is to develop a general framework that incorporates collaborative social tagging with a novel ontology scheme conveying multiple perspectives.

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to develop a general framework that incorporates collaborative social tagging with a novel ontology scheme conveying multiple perspectives.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper proposes a framework where multiple users tag the same object (an image in this case) and an ontology is extended based on these tags while being tolerant of different points of view. Both the tagging and the ontological models are intentionally designed to suit the multi‐perspective environment. The paper develops a method based on a set of rules that determine how to associate new concepts to predefined perspectives (in addition to determining relations to topics or other concepts as typically done in previous research) and how to insert and maintain multiple perspectives.

Findings

This case study experiment, with a set of selected annotated images, indicates the soundness of the proposed ontological model.

Originality/value

The proposed framework characterises the underlying processes for controlled collaborative development of a multi‐perspective ontology and its application to improve image annotation, searching and browsing. The significance of this research is that it focuses on exploring the impact of creating a constantly evolving ontology based on collaborative tagging. The paper is not aware of any other work that has attempted to devise such an environment and to study its dynamics.

Details

Online Information Review, vol. 34 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1468-4527

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 7 February 2018

Christopher Bruhn and Sue Yeon Syn

The purpose of this paper is to use ideas drawn from two founders of American pragmatism, William James and Charles Sanders Peirce, in order to propose a philosophical foundation…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to use ideas drawn from two founders of American pragmatism, William James and Charles Sanders Peirce, in order to propose a philosophical foundation that supports the value of collaborative tagging and reinforces the structure and goals of the Semantic Web.

Design/methodology/approach

The study employs a close analysis of key literature by James and Peirce to answer recent calls for a philosophy of the Web and to respond to research in the LIS literature that has assessed the value and limitations of folksonomy. Moreover, pragmatic views are applied to illustrate the relationships among collaborative tagging, linked data, and the Semantic Web.

Findings

With a philosophical foundation in place, the study highlights the value of the minority tags that fall within the so-called “long tail” of the power law graph, and the importance of granting sufficient time for the full value of folksonomy to be revealed. The discussion goes further to explore how “collaborative tagging” could evolve into “collaborative knowledge” in the form of linked data. Specifically, Peirce’s triadic architectonic is shown to foster an understanding of the construction of linked data through the functional requirements for bibliographic records entity-relation model and resource description framework triples, and James’s image of the multiverse anticipates the goals Tim Berners-Lee has articulated for the Semantic Web.

Originality/value

This study is unique in using Jamesian and Peircean thinking to argue for the value of folksonomy and to suggest implications for the Semantic Web.

Details

Journal of Documentation, vol. 74 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0022-0418

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 21 September 2012

Jin Ma

The purpose of this study is to examine the growth patterns of tag vocabulary in collaborative tagging systems to verify the sustainability and stabilization of tag distributions…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to examine the growth patterns of tag vocabulary in collaborative tagging systems to verify the sustainability and stabilization of tag distributions. Both sustainability and stabilization are essential to the mining and categorization of information driven by tagging behaviors.

Design/methodology/approach

The study was based on time series data of CiteULike from November 2004 to April 2010. Power law distributions were detected to reveal statistical regularities and tagging patterns. Logistic regression analysis with time‐dependent covariates was conducted to identify the factors affecting the growth of distinct tags for articles. The significance of the effects and the time taken for a given article to reach its tagging maturity were also explored.

Findings

Time series plots and trend analysis illustrated the continuous growth of the tagging system. Exploratory analysis of power law distribution fittings indicated a sign of system stability known as scale invariance. Logistic regression results demonstrated that for a particular article, the number of users who tagged the article, the initial date when the article was tagged, and the life span of the article are statistically significant to the ratio of the distinct tag number to the total tag number for a given article. These results confirmed that the distinct tag ratio of an article gives rise to a stable pattern.

Originality/value

Though extensive work has been done on the patterns of tag vocabulary, it is not clear how the growth of distinctive tags behaves in relation to the total number of tag applications, considering time‐dependent covariates such as the number of users, and the longevity of an article. This paper sets to complement the literature on the existing methodology and investigate this property in detail.

Details

Online Information Review, vol. 36 no. 5
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1468-4527

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 10 August 2010

Baozhen Lee and Shilun Ge

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the personalised and social characteristics of open knowledge management in higher education based on social tagging in the Web 2.0…

1288

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the personalised and social characteristics of open knowledge management in higher education based on social tagging in the Web 2.0 environment.

Design/methodology/approach

Through the function of annotation in social tagging, the paper analyses its personalised characteristics of recognising the preferences of participants, and its personalised‐social characteristics of enriching content from all kinds of aspects; through the function of association of social tagging, it analyses its social characteristics of social networking, and its social‐personalised characteristics of collaborative acquisition or recommendation.

Findings

In the process of online information and open knowledge organisation and acquisition based on the annotation function of social tagging in the Web 2.0 environment, the personalised participation of individuals will lead to social results for everyone; however, in the process of online information and open knowledge creation and sharing based on the association function of social tagging, social and collaborative sharing among participants will help with personalised knowledge allocation.

Originality/value

In open knowledge management in higher education, the characteristics of personalisation and sociability based on social tagging will help to personalise the organisation and acquisition of knowledge, and help with social creation and sharing of knowledge.

Details

Online Information Review, vol. 34 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1468-4527

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 15 October 2021

Kangqu Zhou, Chen Yang, Lvcheng Li, Cong Miao, Lijun Song, Peng Jiang and Jiafu Su

This paper proposes a recommendation method that mines the semantic relationship between resources and combine it with collaborative filtering (CF) algorithm for crowdsourcing…

Abstract

Purpose

This paper proposes a recommendation method that mines the semantic relationship between resources and combine it with collaborative filtering (CF) algorithm for crowdsourcing knowledge-sharing communities.

Design/methodology/approach

First, structured tag trees are constructed based on tag co-occurrence to overcome the tags' lack of semantic structure. Then, the semantic similarity between tags is determined based on tag co-occurrence and the tag-tree structure, and the semantic similarity between resources is calculated based on the semantic similarity of the tags. Finally, the user-resource evaluation matrix is filled based on the resource semantic similarity, and the user-based CF is used to predict the user's evaluation of the resources.

Findings

Folksonomy is a knowledge classification method that is suitable for crowdsourcing knowledge-sharing communities. The semantic similarity between resources can be obtained according to the tags in the folksonomy system, which can be used to alleviate the data sparsity and cold-start problems of CF. Experimental results show that compared with other algorithms, the algorithm in this paper performs better in mean absolute error (MAE) and F1, which indicates that the proposed algorithm yields better performance.

Originality/value

The proposed folksonomy-based CF method can help users in crowdsourcing knowledge-sharing communities to better find the resources they need.

Details

Kybernetes, vol. 52 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0368-492X

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 9 March 2010

Isabella Peters and Wolfgang G. Stock

Many Web 2.0 services (including Library 2.0 catalogs) make use of folksonomies. The purpose of this paper is to cut off all tags in the long tail of a document‐specific tag…

3269

Abstract

Purpose

Many Web 2.0 services (including Library 2.0 catalogs) make use of folksonomies. The purpose of this paper is to cut off all tags in the long tail of a document‐specific tag distribution. The remaining tags at the beginning of a tag distribution are considered power tags and form a new, additional search option in information retrieval systems.

Design/methodology/approach

In a theoretical approach the paper discusses document‐specific tag distributions (power law and inverse‐logistic shape), the development of such distributions (Yule‐Simon process and shuffling theory) and introduces search tags (besides the well‐known index tags) as a possibility for generating tag distributions.

Findings

Search tags are compatible with broad and narrow folksonomies and with all knowledge organization systems (e.g. classification systems and thesauri), while index tags are only applicable in broad folksonomies. Based on these findings, the paper presents a sketch of an algorithm for mining and processing power tags in information retrieval systems.

Research limitations/implications

This conceptual approach is in need of empirical evaluation in a concrete retrieval system.

Practical implications

Power tags are a new search option for retrieval systems to limit the amount of hits.

Originality/value

The paper introduces power tags as a means for enhancing the precision of search results in information retrieval systems that apply folksonomies, e.g. catalogs in Library 2.0 environments.

Details

Library Hi Tech, vol. 28 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0737-8831

Keywords

1 – 10 of over 3000