User to User: Browsing for information through other users’ profiles

Presentation at NordLib 2.0

PhD student Charles Seger, RSLIS

www.folket.eu

Charles Seger, PhD-student

Royal School of Library and Information Science

Research program: Information interaction and information architecture

Project title:

Folksonomies: when the user is the information architect.

Main supervisor: Associate Professor Pia Borlund

Project supervisor: Associate Professor Jesper Wiborg Schneider

Agenda

• Definitions and background: • Folksonomies• Social navigation • Pivot browsing in Delicious

• Aim for this project• Case: Quilters• Data• Preliminary results• Questions

Definition: Folksonomies

A folksonomy is the collection of user generated subject headings (tags), describing information objects, applied by the end-users.

Background and motivation

• The users’ employment of folksonomies are personal as well as collective

(Golder & Huberman, 2006)

• The use of folksonomies is rising, at the same time there is a lack of empirical studies of the use.

(Jason Morrison, 2008)

• The users navigate folksonomies by browsing other users profiles

(Millen, Feinberg, & Kerr, 2005)

Pivot browsing

Exploratory information seeking behavior• Users click on:

• Other users (profiles)

• Information objects • Tags

Social navigation

• Users’ exploration of information spaces using other users’ actions

• Path in a forrest• Dogears in used books • Recommender systems• Most lent books in the library

(Se: Dieberger, Dourish, Höök, Resnick, & Wexelblat, 2000).

Case study: Delicious.com

A folksonomy where users can save and tag Internet bookmarks, as well as se other users’ bookmarks and tags

(see: Delicious, 2008)

23

Popular tagsUser: Charles

User: kaeru

(Bates, 1989)

Aim for the PhD project

• Better understanding of the users employment of folksonomies

• Identify use patterns in folksonomies• Develop techniques to support users information behavior in folksonomies

• Investigate to what extent tags can support social navigation

Pilot study

• Case study of a folksonomy• Informetric methods for associating users

• Co-occurrences of tags in user profiles

Case: Quilters

Quilters are charactrized by:• Great passion for their hobby• Use of technologies which can support

them in their hobby• A feeling of being part of a community

(Stalp, 2006)

(Ray, 2006)

(Delicious, 2008b)

(Delicious, 2008c)

Data collection

• 1 webpage• 30 users who indexed the page

• Employing 0-9 tags (all in all 99 tags)

Compiled tags from user profiles: 3713 unique

Frequency of tags: Log Cabin PillowF

requ

ency

of

tags

Tag

10

5

15

20

sewing

pillow

diycushion

Frequency of tags: user profiles F

requ

enc

y of

tag

s

200

400

600

800

1000

Users

Sew_what

joellybaby

Enit

User User Sim

eerriinn rfeit 0,333

eerriinn studiotamar 0,284

valerief missclaudine 0,260

joellybaby valerief 0,253

fufujuice missclaudine 0,252

eerriinn valerief 0,241

joellybaby rfeit 0,231

bjso rfeit 0,226

kgudridge valerief 0,225

Similar users (Dissimilarity threshold = 0,225)

eerriinn og rfeit: top10 tags

eerriinn rfeitblog 50 children 51

shopping 41 crafts 49

crafts 40 Sewing 35

kids 39 tutorial 28

howto 35 diy 25

reference 30 gifts 25

gifts 30 howto 20

baby 28 recipe 18

inspiration 27 fabric 11

lost 24 pattern 8

Preliminary conclusion

• Tags employed by users in folksonomies can be used as a tool for social navigation.

• This requires investigations of the different types of tags’

Thanks for listening

Any Questions?

References 1

Bates, M. J. (1989). The design of browsing and berrypicking techniques for the online search interface. Online Review, 13(5), 407-424.

Golder, S. A., & Huberman, B. A. (2006). Usage patterns of collaborative tagging systems. Journal of Information Science, 32(2), 198-208.

Jason Morrison, P. (2008). Tagging and searching: Search retrieval effectiveness of folksonomies on the World Wide Web. Information Processing & Management, 44(4), 1562-1579.

Millen, D., Feinberg, J., & Kerr, B. (2005). Social bookmarking in the enterprise. Queue, 3(9), 28-35.

Ray, D. (2006, Date:09-02). Log Cabin-ish Pillow [Date: 03-15]. http://www.daciaray.com/?p=160.

Stalp, M. C. (2006). Negotiating time and space for serious leisure: Quilting in the modern US home. [Article]. Journal of Leisure Research, 38(1), 104-132.

References 2: Delicious web sider

Delicious (2008). Delicious, 2008, from http://delicious.com/

Delicious (2008a). Charles's bookmarks at Delicious Retrieved 09-01, 2008, from http://delicious.com/charles

Delicious (2008b). Everyone's bookmarks for "DaciaRay.com Log Cabin-ish Pillow" at Delicious Retrieved 09-01, 2008, from

http://delicious.com/url/abf74acc4d215799d989ffffa57eb856?show=all

Delicious (2008c). Fufujuice’s bookmarks at Delicious Retrieved 09-01, 2008, from http://delicious.com/fufujuice