Jon Udell has an interesting piece on (among other things) the use of del.icio.us tagging by InfoWorld editors as a way for them to work with each other and also interact with their readers.
We’re finding similar things at Nature. First, our social bookmarking service for scientists, Connotea, is proving useful as a collaborative tool for our journalists and editors. For example, editorial teams can use tagged links to communicate ideas and leads among themselves. Also, journalists researching particular stories can use the system to store and retrieve informative links under suitable tag names — and can choose to keep those links private, at least temporarily, if they’re worried about being scooped.
Second, Connotea enables greater interaction with readers. For example, collections of links gathered by a writer during their research can be released on publication of their article in order to provide readers with further sources of information. A recent example of this was Declan Butler’s Nature article on the new generation of laboratory information systems, which pointed interested readers to his accompanying collection of links.
As Jon Udell points out, such collections are future-proof because they can grow even after the URL has been distributed. This means that sometimes, as with Declan’s own collection of avian flu links, they can become important community resources that continue to be tracked by significant numbers of interested readers, potentially even long after the original article has become obsolete. Of course, readers can themselves contribute simply by using the same tag names. For example, the Connotea collections on bioinformatics and open access have attracted groups of users that turn these pages into something like pared-down group blogs.
With participative (or grassroots or citizen) journalism becoming an increasingly important theme inside media organisations and beyond, it’s intriguing to see that tagging also seems to have a role to play in facilitating exchanges between writers and their readers, and in blurring the boundaries between those traditionally distinct roles.
Jon has a follow-up piece here that ponders the implications of federated folksonomies developing across multiple systems with different user communities. Once again, thought-provoking stuff.
Comment by timo — July 22, 2005 @ 12:10 pm
antiweb turns 10 at 21 Grand this Thursday
What better way to post this announcement than to crib Scot’s verbatim? Well, first, for Bareans who might plan to come, let me point out that 21 Grand is actually located at 416 25th St. Oakland, CA 94612. birdhouse.org: An…
Trackback by Telegraph — July 26, 2005 @ 6:15 pm
I think it’s more interesting to think about it then as, Tagging as Participative Scholarship. I like the idea that someone can post an article and then provide an annotated (tagged?) bibliography. Not only could it grow, as you suggest, but also allow for commentary and additional bibliography or URL entries by co-authors or other readers. I’d like to see some of these peer-reviewed Web journals try something like this to improve their value.
Comment by donturn — August 12, 2005 @ 1:04 pm
Tagging vs folksonomy vs categorisation
Just discovered (via Academic Commons): You’re It! A blog on tagging.
This engaging pro-tagging manifesto caught my attention. It takes a line that is, at first view, not entirely dissimilar to the "wisdom of crowds" argument currently circ…
Trackback by connect.educause.edu — October 3, 2005 @ 10:49 am
Make Sure the Safe You Buy is Really Fire and Burglar Proof
Is a home safe really fire and burglary proof? The answer to that question depends entirely on the type of safe you choose and what materials are used to make it. If you are looking for fire resistant data storage or media storage, these types of safes…
Trackback by See Proof — March 1, 2008 @ 4:25 am