Organizing with Web 2.0

There is such an array of books and materials out there for users it's wonderful that Web 2.0 tools have created easier ways to find them. Users want the simplicity that the internet has brought when seeking information. The trend of organizing information through tags could be a nightmare for professionally trained catalogers and indexers. Those professions have worked hard to keep information organized and to make it user friendly and consistent.

With the advent of tagging and creating categories of their own, users are making information more user friendly and accessible. With this, though, comes the lack of precision and recall traditional catalogs give users. If libraries were organized in such a way, which I hope it never comes to, how could one walk into one library and then another and know how to find anything? On sites that allow tagging, the way information on sites that allow tagging is organized is very subjective. As I tagged sites in delicious.com I did not agree with the tags others had put on the websites I used. I only used those I thought were fitting, making the process, very subjective. In a library, it is important to keep the same organization system for consistency in all libraries. I'm torn about whether tags are more useful than traditional headings. It depends on the area that is using the tags. For Flickr, Delicious.com, and other social sites where anyone can tag, yes, tags are far more efficient than traditional headings. Otherwise, people would not use the site or the labeling function. In other sites, it is important to have the traditional headings for consistency's sake. There are some areas where the control is necessary, but everyone using the internet will never have that training to tag or categorize information the same.