EDUCAUSE | Contributed by Organizations or Campuses; Articles, Papers, and Reports; and Folksonomies

Folksonomies and Image Tagging: Seeing the Future?

ckeller — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 12:37:34 -0600

This article gives an overview on folksonomies, what they are and how people use them.

What open access research can do for Wikipedia

drupal — Fri, 04 May 2007 12:00:19 -0500

This study examines the degree to which Wikipedia entries cite or reference research and scholarship, and whether that research and scholarship is generally available to readers. Working on the assumption that where Wikipedia provides links to research and scholarship that readers can readily consult, it increases the authority, reliability, and educational quality of this popular encyclopedia, this study examines Wikipedia's use of open access research and scholarship, that is, peer-reviewed journal articles that have been made freely available online. This study demonstrates among a sample of 100 Wikipedia entries, which included 168 sources or references, only two percent of the entries provided links to open access research and scholarship. However, it proved possible to locate, using Google Scholar and other search engines, relevant examples of open access work for 60 percent of a sub-set of 20 Wikipedia entries. The results suggest that much more can be done to enrich and enhance this encyclopedia's representation of the current state of knowledge. To assist in this process, the study provides a guide to help Wikipedia contributors locate and utilize open access research and scholarship in creating and editing encyclopedia entries.

The IT Manager's Guide to Social Computing

drupal — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 12:30:34 -0500

The author gives an overview on the many aspects of social computing.

Folksonomies: Tidying up Tags?

drupal — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 12:28:52 -0600

"In this article we look at what makes folksonomies work. We agree with the premise that tags are no replacement for formal systems, but we see this as being the core quality that makes folksonomy tagging so useful. We begin by looking at the issue of "sloppy tags", a problem to which critics of folksonomies are keen to allude, and ask if there are ways the folksonomy community could offset such problems and create systems that are conducive to searching, sorting and classifying. We then go on to question this "tidying up" approach and its underlying assumptions, highlighting issues surrounding removal of low-quality, redundant or nonsense metadata, and the potential risks of tidying too neatly and thereby losing the very openness that has made folksonomies so popular."

Social Bookmarking Tools (I)

drupal — Wed, 18 May 2005 10:53:46 -0500

The authors give a general overview of social bookmarking tools.

Social Bookmarking Tools (II)

drupal — Wed, 18 May 2005 11:00:13 -0500

The authors discuss Connotea, a free online reference management and social bookmarking service for scientists, created by Nature Publishing Group.

Folksonomies - Cooperative Classification and Communication Through Shared Metadata

drupal — Tue, 08 Mar 2005 12:00:05 -0600

"This paper examines user-‍generated metadata as implemented and applied in two web services designed to share and organize digital media to better understand grassroots classification. Metadata - data about data - allows systems to collocate related information, and helps users find relevant information. The creation of metadata has generally been approached in two ways: professional creation and author creation. In libraries and other organizations, creating metadata, primarily in the form of catalog records, has traditionally been the domain of dedicated professionals working with complex, detailed rule sets and vocabularies. The primary problem with this approach is scalability and its impracticality for the vast amounts of content being produced and used, especially on the World Wide Web. The apparatus and tools built around professional cataloging systems are generally too complicated for anyone without specialized training and knowledge. A second approach is for metadata to be created by authors. The movement towards creator described documents was heralded by SGML, the WWW, and the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative. There are problems with this approach as well - often due to inadequate or inaccurate description, or outright deception. This paper examines a third approach: user-‍created metadata, where users of the documents and media create metadata for their own individual use that is also shared throughout a community."