I’d like to link a curious (at least for me) folksonomy review “Folksonomies fascinate me” by a librarian perspective. Some of the points:

Folksonomies fascinate me, in no small part because they are a direct response to a failing of our profession which has irritated me since library school days..

When embarking on a piece of analysis, a key step is determining the user classes/types that the software will serve……If I was analysing the issuing of a book, several potential classes that spring to mind are “Library Assistantsâ€?, “Front Desk Managerâ€?, “Librarianâ€?, “Customerâ€?, “System Administratorâ€? and “Library Managerâ€?….Who are the user classes for a classification scheme? At the highest level, I would say librarians and “ROTWâ€?, being the “Rest Of The Worldâ€?.

“I can’t satisfy everyone� so librarians take the easy path, and develop a system that meets their requirements. It’s up to ROTW to learn this, and accept that the librarian’s mental model doesn’t match its own.
Librarians were the gatekeepers to knowledge, so the ROTW marched to our tune because they had no choice. Now, however, with the information explosion, the ROTW is standing up and saying “look, this isn’t good enough – I want these terms, and he wants those terms, and she wants it to work like this and…�. Folksonomies are our users fighting back

If librarians don’t start opening themselves up to this philosophy, don’t stop building walls to all this perceived chaos, we may find another finger slipping from the power we’ve gathered. And very soon, we’re going to drop…

I’ve had a presentation of my folksonomies’ article at the ISKO (an international society made up firstly of librarians). Librarians and information architects as well, are loosing the train. They are having an hard time to grasp the power and the deeper meaning of social classification..

In every design process that involves user, the first activity should be an audience definition: find out what your users look like, what goals they have, how they will use your artifact.

So why a typical classification work shouldn’t require a such phase? You know, the price you pay missing these phase is creating a probably useless product, something that your users can’t use!

A classification scheme is a biased tool. That’s ok for me, but you should understand and carefully direct your bias..

Wake up! Librarians, wake up!

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This entry was posted on Saturday, September 17th, 2005 at 9:59 am and is filed under Information Architecture, Online Resources, External Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.