On Tagging and Controlled Vocabularies

Clay Shirky's Ontology is Overrated: Categories, Links, and Tags is certainly a provocative and the discussion about importance of controlled vocabularies and effective use of tags is still ongoing in various forums where catalogers and those interested in description of resources congregate (even if mostly virtually). When it comes to ontologies and controlled vocabularies, I believe that there is a need for the profession to use consistent terminology. If several nomenclatures do exist, they should always be documented and properly referenced. I think that librarians, archivists, and museum curators should provide metadata that contain controlled vocabulary, even pre-coordinated. That said I also believe that popular taxonomies (folksonomies) should be considered when providing access to digital resources. The controlled vocabularies can serve mostly system-related and administrative functions for the staff, they also provide initial categorization. Once the object is in the system, it can move freely throughout the collection prodded by whatever probabilistic algorithm. Including folksonomies into metadata (or maybe rather indexes) for searching and browsing can make finding objects in collections easier, as it provides users with more options. It is also a social commentary on a given culture or society and an indicator of interest among users. However, that does not mean resignation on established terms, because the scholarly and professional needs of expert users have to be addressed, as well. There is no dichotomy. It's not either folksonomies or controlled vocabularies, because both systems can coexist and complement each other.