I had an ephiphany yesterday. Tagging and subject headings are the same thing. Well, almost the same thing.
Subject headings are controlled vocabulary...such a prudish sounding phrase, don't you think? But it just means that there are only so many phrases to choose from and the materials you are researching have to fit or be forced to fit into those phrases.
But tagging, those are totally open and free and fun. Of course they may not be as precise but does that always matter? I don't think so. You can choose anything you want and others will choose anything they want and pretty soon it's a little confusing but the places you can take those ideas...aah, for a trivia collector like me? It's a little piece of heaven right here and right now!
The epiphany part? I was working with a student doing research for a paper and as I started to tell him about subject headings to narrow down a database search he said "Oh, you're using tags." I wanted to laugh out loud but as a reference librarian sitting in the middle of the wide open spaces of a library...I laughed out loud!
Joey:
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing this. As a former newspaper researcher, who used old-style Dialog and Lexis Nexis in the late 80s, I'm laughing out loud with you. Who knew that search terms would evolve into tags?
Best,
Ralph
Great story. Perhaps another name for tags would be "uncontrolled vocabulary?"
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