Thing #14: Tagging in General

I actually had an epiphany about tagging when I was updating (yet again) my lecture for ART 100W. One of my standard learning objectives is the attempt to explain the difference between keywords and controlled-vocabulary subject headings. I realized that tags fit right in between, and I've actually incorporated them into my presentation--on the assumption that many of the students are probably more familiar with tags than with subject headings. Here's the continuum:

Keywords
–not consistent, not neccesarily a desciption of what it's about
Tags (Flickr, Del.icio.us)
–not consistent, but does describe what it's about, since creator assigns it
Subject Headings
–consistent & does describe what it's about

It'll be interesting to see if this helps anybody "get it." Another thing that occured to me as I've rooting around all these sites that have to do with tagging--it's a good background for students to have when you try to teach the above. If they've done tagging themselves, or search these kinds of sites, they'll understand the challenge of calling something what it is, and how different people may describe the same thing using very different words. If "learning by doing" is a good technique--and it is--they might understand some elements of information literacy better than anyone who hasn't done this DIY version of classification.