user responses to social bookmarking at mlibrary
DESCRIPTION
User Responses to Social Bookmarking at MLibrary. Ken Varnum [email protected] Web Systems Manager University of Michigan Library. What Is MTagger?. Library-Based Tagging Tool delicious fURL Social networking tools (Flickr, Facebook, etc.) Way to organize academic bookmarks - PowerPoint PPT PresentationTRANSCRIPT
User Responses to Social Bookmarking at MLibrary
Web Systems ManagerUniversity of Michigan Library
User Responses to Social Bookmarking
What Is MTagger?
• Library-Based Tagging Tool• delicious
• fURL
• Social networking tools (Flickr, Facebook, etc.)
• Way to organize academic bookmarks• Always accessible
• Shared with others
• Build a common pool of knowledge
User Responses to Social Bookmarking
Why?
• Give our users a way to organize most library resources
• Demonstrate “2.0” technologies to ourselves
• Improve findability of resources
• Give users a stake in our collections
User Responses to Social Bookmarking
What MTagger Does
• Allows users to assign keywords to “library stuff” on our site• Catalog
• Web Pages
• Digital Images
• Library publications
• Or anything, anywhere (via bookmarklet)
• Search, display, retrieve bookmarks
User Responses to Social Bookmarking
Inherits from
• Delicious.com
• Penn Tags
• Flickr
• Many other social bookmarking sites
User Responses to Social Bookmarking
What Is Different?
Collections• MLibrary (library web pages)
• Mirlyn (library catalog)
• Digital Images
• Scholarly Publishing
• Everything Else
Integration with Site
User Responses to Social Bookmarking
How MTagger Is Used
• Tags are generally tagger-centric
• Exception: Librarians tag differently
User Responses to Social Bookmarking
Usage
• Basic Stats (as of 3/26/09):• 1357 total users; 603 actively tagging
• 3775 tags; 3159 unique
• 2820 unique URIs tagged
• Not as broadly / deeply as we’d like
User Responses to Social Bookmarking
Perceptions of MTagger
Interviews with users, non-users, and librarian users
• Personal motivations are stronger than social motivations
• Preference for tag display alongside traditional search results
• Tagging needs a marketing campaign
• Tagging is a "Librarian" thing
User Responses to Social Bookmarking
Privacy
• Tagging tied to U-M single sign-on (uniqname); guest accounts welcome
• Accountability & public face
• Balance of anonymity and sharing
• Most feedback on this issue from a single source
User Responses to Social Bookmarking
Usability Study
• Conducted over four months in summer 2008
• Two students at U-M School of Information
• Librarians on steering committee
User Responses to Social Bookmarking
Usability Recommendations
• Tag cloud display on pages
• Tag cloud display in MTagger
• Handling of “collections”
• Workflow
User Responses to Social Bookmarking
Lessons Learned
• Personal motivations are stronger than social motivations
• Focus on outcomes of tagging, not process
• Enable personal reference library• Increase flexibility of tag display/retrieval
• Contextualize the material that users bookmark
User Responses to Social Bookmarking
When It’s not Enough to Say,“I Tag You”
• Easier sharing:• Tags
• Tagged items
• User lists
• Publish to other social networking tools
User Responses to Social Bookmarking
Alternate Catalog Integration
Favorites Will be Tags
User Responses to Social Bookmarking
New Library Web Site
• Better integration in new library web site
• Make tagging a byproduct, not a product
• Will influence search engine
• “My Library” redux?
User Responses to Social Bookmarking
Bigger Picture
• Benefit to scale (delicious)
• Benefit to academic focus
• Mechanism needed for sharing tags across libraries
User Responses to Social Bookmarking
Thank You
Email: [email protected]
Blog: RSS4Lib http://www.rss4lib.com/
Usability Reports:http://www.lib.umich.edu/usability/projects/MTagger.html