You'll notice that uploading a photo that I've saved to my hard drive causes me no problems. This is the proof of me mucking about with Mosaic Maker. The obligatory credit code is as follows:
1. Verve 501 - blue hour, 2. BHP Biliton prefab concrete slabs, 3. Mirror of the World bookmarks, 4. State Library Victoria front lawn, 5. Pigeons attack the State Library of Victoria, 6. State Library Victoria reseeding lawn, 7. State Library across Swanston, 8. State Library Victoria reading room, 9. Dome at State Library, 10. Ned Kelly Jerilderie Letter, 11. Jerilderie Letter, 12. Shakespeare, 13. Early morning in the dome., 14. Shakespeare window, 15. Cowen Gallery, 16. Mirror of the World banner, 17. Painting in Cowen Gallery, 18. Keith Murdoch Gallery, 19. Art of the book, 20. How I entered there, 21. How I entered there I cannot truly say, 22. Bookshelf above the Dome Gallery, 23. Redmond Barry Reading Room, 24. Newspaper Reading Room, 25. Shaving heads, 26. Leukaemia Foundation, 27. Nova broadcast, 28. Dylan Lewis, 29. Nova van @ SLV, 30. Footpath Fragment at SLV, 31. dragon slayer, 32. reading room, 33. leather light and wood, 34. Sinking Library35. Not available36. Not available
More proof of how much time it's possible to waste on flickr, I played a game of Matchr. Besides taking me 3 and a half minutes to match the tags of sometimes incredibly different photos, it made me think about the whole tagging thing with relation to libraries. There have been some discussions here lately about user-contributed content and how to incorporate it into the revamped website.
Although I've previously been cautiously optimistic about the possibility, I'm no longer sure. I mean, let's face it, libraries have been "tagging" things for years—that's exactly what subject headings are. But the advantage of library systems are that you've got a controlled vocabulary which is actually organised and makes a modicum of sense, unlike "folksonomies" (could there be a more irritating coinage?) in which users can apply tags that are so general as to be meaningless—in which case, why bother having them? I know I never did very well with the whole LCSH exercises in Library School, but at least I could tell that it made some kind of sense. I mean, I could tag this post "fish" even though it has nothing to do with fish. It might be a meaningful label to me because it makes me think about metaphors with giving a person a fish and feeding them for a day while if you give them a fishing pole you feed them for a lifetime. Until the fishing pole breaks.
I'm sure I have a point there and I'm pretty sure it's that I'm grumpy. And need to get away from the computer.
1 comment:
I agree with you...can you imagine trying to locate items in your library that have been tagged haphazardly with not guidelines? That's why people come to libraries, we have an organised way of cataloguing things so we can retrive them again.
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