Assignment 5: Tag analysis: books
LIBR 287: Seminar in Information Science
Instructor: Robert Bruce

Objective

In this assignment you will analyze the tags listed on the folksonomy-based website, Library Thing at http://www.librarything.com/ for each of the books you'd selected in Assignment 1. Following your analysis, write a two to three page (maximum), double-spaced paper (no title page or APA formatting required) on your thoughts and observations about the tags (folksonomies) you evaluated. Based upon your analysis, do you think folksonomies would be an effective means of organizing books, subject-wise, in a library catalog? Why or why not? Please don't cite other research. I want your observations.

To search for your books on Library Thing, click on the following link: http://www.librarything.com/search

Note: If your books don't exist and/or don't appear to have any tags associated with them on the Library Thing website, browse or search Library Thing for books you find interesting and evaluate them instead.

For each of your five book selections, consider (i.e. use as a guide in your overall evaluation) the following:

1. How many Library Thing tags were an exact character-for-character match (regardless of case-sensitivity) with one of the tags that you chose?
2. Were any of the Library Thing tags synonyms of one of the tags that you chose?
3. Were any of the Library Thing tags comprised of only non-alphabetical characters?
4. Were any of the Library Thing tags comprised of alphabetical and non-alphabetical characters?
5. Were any of the Library Thing tags idioms? Slang?
6. Were any of the Library Thing tags a neologism? A portmanteau word?