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Searching with Tags: Do Tags Help Users Find Things?
Abstract
The question of whether tags can be useful in the process of information retrieval was examined in this pilot study. Many tags are subject related and could work well as index terms or entry vocabulary; however, folksonomies also include relationships that are traditionally not included in controlled vocabularies including affective or time and task related tags and the user name of the tagger. Participants searched a social bookmarking tool, specialising in academic articles (CiteULike), and an online journal database (Pubmed) for articles relevant to a given information request. Screen capture software was used to collect participant actions and a semi-structured interview asked them to describe their search process. Preliminary results showed that participants did use tags in their search process, as a guide to searching and as hyperlinks to potentially useful articles. However, participants also used controlled vocabularies in the journal database to locate useful search terms and links to related articles supplied by Pubmed. Additionally, participants reported using user names of taggers and group names to help select resources by relevance. The inclusion of subjective and social information from the taggers is very different from the traditional objectivity of indexing and was reported as an asset by a number of participants. This study suggests that while users value social and subjective factors when searching, they also find utility in objective factors such as subject headings. Most importantly, users are interested in the ability of systems to connect them with related articles whether via subject access or other means.
... Surveys have also been conducted on the use of collaborative tagging systems by students and researchers, but not in the medical field (31)(32)(33). In the unique study fairly similar to this one, Kipp and Campbell examined information behaviour of students in Library and Information Science when searching PubMed and CiteULike in order to measure the usefulness of tags for information searching (34). The study showed that participants employ search terms similar to tags assigned in CiteULike. ...
... And even when the user fully understands such notions, the system does not become easier to handle. Indeed, students in Library and Information Science have experienced similar difficulties to understand the search functionalities of the system (34). The use of CiteULike is far from clear, especially for someone whose information literacy skills are underdeveloped. ...
... Moreover, the tags have only been useful as browsing feature, not as querying one. Students in Library and Information Science, who have tested CiteULike, arrived at the same conclusion (34). It is therefore not the function of tagging that proved useful for information searching and was appreciated by the participants. ...
Introduction: Finding relevant scientific information is crucial for healthcare professionals. But with the exponential number of resources published on the Internet, the task has become a lot more difficult and time-consuming. Collaborative tagging systems, such as CiteULike, allow Web users to store and organize their bookmarks of online content by assigning them metadata in the form of tags.Aim: The study investigated the extent to which tags assigned in the collaborative tagging system CiteULike contribute to the finding of relevant medical scientific papers by healthcare professionals.Methods: A task-oriented evaluation was designed and conducted with a sample of 22 physicians from various specialisations at different career levels. Their information behaviour in PubMed/Medline and CiteULike was observed and compared. The evaluation was followed by a semi-structured interview. Results: Relevant tags are assigned in CiteULike but their number is too low to efficiently contribute to the searching process. Nevertheless the study also showed that CiteULike helped physicians to find relevant papers thanks to its social bookmarking features. In addition to measuring the efficiency of collaborative tagging systems for healthcare professionals in their information seeking process, the study also presents various observations and insights into the information behaviour of physicians.
... Users' tags reflect their language because social tagging allows users to add their own tags based on their interests. Several researchers have discussed the impact of tagging on retrieval performance on the web (Bao et al. 2007;Choi 2009;Choy and Lui 2006;Golder and Huberman 2006;Heymann, Koutrika and Garcia-Molina 2008;Kipp and Campbell 2010;Sen et al. 2006;Yanbe et al. 2006). Choy and Lui (2006) have applied the statistical tool of Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) to the evaluation of tag similarity by examining pairs of tags of singular and plural forms, and concluded that collaborative tagging has a great impact on retrieval. ...
... In her research, Choi (2009) has provided a new angle for understanding social tags by considering them as "facets." Kipp and Campbell (2010) also have conducted a study examining whether tags would be useful for information retrieval by limiting the scope of information to scholarly documents such as academic articles at CiteULike and PubMed online journal database. Several studies have explored tags in the context of indexing languages by comparing tags with controlled vocabularies (Good and Tennis 2009;Kipp 2005). ...
This study employs the FRBR (Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records) conceptual model to provide in-depth investigation on the characteristics of social tags by analyzing the bibliographic attributes of tags that are not limited to subject properties. FRBR describes four different levels of entities (i.e., Work, Expression, Manifestation, and Item), which provide a distinguishing understanding of each entity in the bibliographic universe. In this research, since the scope of data analysis focuses on tags assigned to web documents, consideration on Manifestation and Item has been excluded. Accordingly, only the attributes of Work and Expression entity were investigated in order to map the attributes of tags to attributes defined in those entities. The content analysis on tag attributes was conducted on a total of 113 web documents regarding 11 attribute categories defined by FRBR. The findings identified essential bibliographic attributes of tags and tagging behaviors by subject. The findings showed that concerning specific subject areas, taggers exhibited different tagging behaviors representing distinctive features and tendencies. These results have led to the conclusion that there should be an increased awareness of diverse user needs by subject in terms of the practical implications of metadata generation.
... Currently, the research is focused on both the cognitive aspects and information behavior of users when using tags and/or subject headings for information retrieval as well as user motivations for using tags for retrieval or description (cf. Kipp & Campbell, 2010;McFadden & Weidenbenner, 2010) and more technical aspects such as semantic imitation, or semantically similar tags (Fu, Kannampallil, Kang, & He, 2010), and leveraging, or increasing user motivation to contribute tags (Spiteri, 2011). McFadden and Weidenbenner (2010) Additionally, the authors note that tagging is ''user-empowering'' and will attract users back to the library catalog (p. ...
... Two papers stand out in particular. First, Kipp and Campbell's (2010) study of people searching a social bookmarking tool that specialized in academic articles found that while the participants used the tags in their search process, they also used controlled vocabularies to locate useful search terms and links to select resources by relevance. ...
Purpose - This is an attempt to introduce proactive changes when creating and providing intellectual access in order to convince catalogers to become more social catalogers then they have ever been in the past. Approach - Through a brief review and analysis of relevant literature a definition of social cataloging and social cataloger is given. Findings - User contributed content to library catalogs affords informational professionals the opportunity to see directly the users' perceptions of the usefulness and about-ness of information resources. This is a form of social cataloging especially from the perspective of the information professional seeking to organize information to support knowledge discovery and access. Implications - The user and the cataloger exercise their voice as to what the information resources are about, which in essence is interpreting the intentions of the creator of the resources, how the resource is related to other resources, and perhaps even how the resources can be, or have been, used. Depending on the type of library and information environment, the weight of the work may or may not fall equally on both user and cataloger. Originality/value - New definitions of social cataloging and social cataloguing are offered and are linked back to Jesse Shera's idea of social epistemology.
... Users" tags reflect their language because they allow users to add their own tags based on their interests. Several researchers have discussed the impact of tagging on retrieval performance on the web (Bao et al., 2007;Choy and Lui, 2006;Golder and Huberman, 2006;Heymann et al., 2008;Kipp and Campbell, 2010;Sen et al., 2006;Yanbe et al., 2006). Choy and Lui (2006) have applied the statistical tool of Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) to the evaluation of tag similarity by examining pairs of tags of singular and plural forms, and concluded that collaborative tagging has a great impact on retrieval. ...
... Bao et al. (2007) have explored the use of social annotations to improve web search and stated that social annotations could be useful for web search by focusing on two aspects: similarity ranking (between a query and a web page) and static ranking. Kipp and Campbell (2010) have examined whether tags would be useful for information retrieval by limiting the scope of information to scholarly documents such as academic articles at CiteULike and Pubmed online journal database. Furthermore, several researchers have discussed the usefulness of social tagging for cataloging and classification by examining the linguistic aspects of user vocabulary (Makani and Spiteri, 2010;Spiteri, 2007). ...
... Social tags might complement professional subject indexing, as noted by Rafferty (2018), Rolla (2009), Kipp and Campbell (2010) and Golub et al. (2014). However, social tagging suffers from drawbacks such as the absence of consistent indexing rules, users employing various tags denoting the same concept, unresolved homonymous tags. ...
Purpose
Many end users turn to Google Books and social tagging services to identify books of interest. How successful they are will depend on subject indexing applied in these services (among other factors). The study aimed to determine: (1) to what degree are Queerlit books identified as LGBTQ+ books in widely used information services, in particular Google Books, LibraryThing and Goodreads; and, (2) whether metadata in these information services could be considered of value for the Queerlit database and complement its highly extensive and highly specific indexing.
Design/methodology/approach
The study compared keywords (subject index terms, tags) assigned to works of Swedish LGBTQ+ fiction across three commercial services: Google Books, Goodreads and LibraryThing, against the curated database, Queerlit.
Findings
Of the 1320 LGBTQ+ works in Queerlit, only a small portion was found in the three web services: 8.26% on Google Books ( n = 109), 13.26% on Goodreads ( n = 175), while about half on LibraryThing (55.3%, n = 730). This underrepresentation of Swedish LGBTQ+ works in the three international commercial information services makes them hardly of value to the readers. This is exacerbated by the fact that only a minority of Queerlit books found in the three services are categorised as LGBTQ+. The Queerlit database might benefit from consulting social tagging services when indexing both LGBTQ+ specific and general themes.
Originality/value
No earlier study compared in a systematic manner four different information retrieval systems and identified challenges as well as potential benefits in relation to finding LGBTQ+ fiction.
... enhance conventional retrieval systems" (p. 510), a finding also reached by Rolla (2009), Kipp and Campbell (2010), Golub et al. (2014) and Adler (2009) for transgender books and Bates and Rowley (2011) for LGBTQI works. ...
Purpose
This article aims to help ensure high-quality subject access to Swedish lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersexual (LGBTQI) fiction, and aims to identify challenges that librarians consider important to address, on behalf of themselves and end users.
Design/methodology/approach
A web-based questionnaire comprising 35 closed and open questions, 22 of which were required, was sent via online channels in January 2022. By the survey closing date, 20 March 2022, 82 responses had been received. The study was intended to complement an earlier study targeting end users.
Findings
Both this study of librarians and the previous study of end users have painted a dismal image of online search services when it comes to searching for LGBTQI fiction. The need to consult different channels (e.g. social media, library catalogues and friends), the inability to search more specifically than for the broad LGBTQI category and suboptimal search interfaces were among the commonly reported issues. The results of these studies are used to inform the development of a dedicated Swedish LGBTQI fiction database with an online search interface.
Originality/value
The subject searching of fiction via online services is usually limited to genre with facets for time and place, while users are often seeking characteristics such as pacing, characterization, storyline, frame/setting, tone and language/style. LGBTQI fiction is even more challenging to search because indexing practices are not really being standardized or disseminated worldwide. This study helps address this important gap, in both research and practical applications.
... 510). These findings were concurred by Rolla (2009), Kipp and Campbell (2010), . ...
Humanities scholars can today engage in research inquiry using data from a range of varied collections which are often characterised by poor subject access, often resulting in systems that underperform and even effectively prevent access to data, information and knowledge. In spite of the availability of professional standards and guidelines to provide quality-controlled subject access through knowledge organisation systems (KOS), subject access in such collections is rarely based on KOS. At the same time, KOS themselves may come with problems such as being slow to update, being rigidly structured and not incorporating end-users’ vocabulary. It may therefore be useful to consider methods for remediating these deficiencies in KOSs, such as collecting user-generated metadata via social tagging or complementing automated indexing techniques with manual ones. To help address the above problems, the paper discusses these challenges and points to possible solutions in different contexts. It does so by reflecting on an open educational resource (OER) devoted to this theme, titled Introduction to Knowledge Organisation Systems for Digital Humanities. It was developed as part of an EU project called DiMPAH (Digital Methods Platform for the Arts and Humanities), 2021–2023, creating seven OERs for inclusion in DARIAH Teach.
... The first reason for this is because, for people who are not familiar with an indexing system designed by professionals (and that means practically everybody), retrieving the relevant resources very soon becomes rather frustrating (Rolla, 2009: 182;Kipp and Campbell, 2010). The rules are unfamiliar and the hierarchy is not transparent. ...
In the last twenty years, indexing systems have undergone a profound transformation that has been dubbed social tagging or folksonomy. The aim of this article is not to furnish instructions about the best way to tag library resources. Instead, the aim here is to consider the activity of tagging from a more abstract standpoint; that is, from the viewpoint of social memory. As a first priority, therefore, this article deals with the function performed by tagging: how social access to information is
organized. After a brief discussion of social memory, three core issues are taken into consideration: first, the function performed by tagging; second, the feedback cycle which is triggered by the interplay of users and the machine; third, the way that tags do not inform us about the contents of library resources, but about what users think the contents of library resources are. The last question to be tackled by this article is whether any correlation with the evolution of social memory can be
discerned in the procedures of tagging and, if so, what the evolutionary advantage of the activity of social tagging consists of.
... So, how does the assignment of varying forms of tags and non-subject tags affect the retrieval performance of tagging systems? Very few studies (Heymann, Koutrika and Garcia-Molina 2008;Kipp and Campbell 2010) have examined this issue, and none on an operational OPAC; Heymann, Koutrika and Garcia-Molina's study was based on the social bookmarking site Delicious while Kipp and Campbell's study was based on an academic publications bookmarking site CiteULike. Hence, the objective of this study is to compare the retrieval effectiveness of using tag as an access point as against subject heading or keyword in a public library OPAC. ...
The objective of this study is to compare the retrieval effectiveness of using tag as an access point as against subject heading or keyword in a public library OPAC. Thirty queries were searched in Oakville Public Library, and tag retrieved a fewer number of items per query than keyword or subject. However, there was no significant difference in the average precision values.L’objectif de cette étude est de comparer l’efficacité du repérage à l’aide des étiquettes comme point d’accès à celui des vedettes matières ou des mots-clés d’un OPAC de bibliothèque publique. Trente requêtes ont été analysées à la bibliothèque publique d’Oakville et le repérage par étiquette a retourné moins de résultats par requête que les mots-clés ou les vedettes matières. Cependant, aucune différence significative n’a été notée pour les valeurs de précision moyenne.
... Social tags are also blamed by Kipp (2011) for imprecision, semantic ambiguity and lack of hierarchy. Despite these issues, researchers such as Peters et al. (2011), Ding et al. (2009 and Kipp and Campbell (2010) insist on the coexistence of social tags and controlled vocabularies. ...
The internet in its Web 2.0 version has given an opportunity among users to be participative and the chance to enhance the existing system, which makes it dynamic and collaborative. The activity of social tagging among researchers to organize the digital resources is an interesting study among information professionals. The one way of organizing the resources for future retrieval through these user-generated terms makes an interesting analysis by comparing them with professionally created controlled vocabularies. Here in this study, an attempt has been made to compare Ubrary of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) terms with IibraryThing social tags. In this comparative analysis, the results show that social tags can be used to enhance the metadata for information retrieval. But still, the uncontrolled nature of social tags is a concern and creates uncertainty among researchers.
... -Hospitable, with mitigation: Derridean hospitality in itself would render the system unusable, so with some vigilance for harm, hospitality could be combined with a more restrictive system. For example, tags could be used in tandem with controlled vocabularies (Kipp and Campbell, 2010). Also, an ideal of unconditional hospitality would be a perpetual counterbalance to practices relying on invasive surveillance and (bibliographic) control as outlined in Foucault's work (1994Foucault's work ( , 1995. ...
Ethical standards are required at both the individual and system levels of the information organization enterprise, but are those standards the same? For example, are the ethical responsibilities of DDCs editorial board fundamentally the same as for an individual cataloger? And, what are the consequences of decisions made using different ethical frameworks to the users of knowledge organization systems? A selection of ethical theories suitable for evaluating moral dilemmas at all levels in information organization is presented, including utilitarianism, deontology, and pragmatism, as well as the more contemporary approaches of justice, feminist, and Derridean ethics. Finally, a selection of criteria is out-lined, taken from the existing ethical frameworks, to use as a starting point for development of an ethical framework specifically for information organization.
... People with healthy eating views that map onto the food guide's focus on minimizing fat, sugar, or salt intakes may find the fat content facet (for example, 2%) or sweetening agent facet (for example, sugar or honey) of interest, while those who are interested in an understanding of foods that addresses food processing may find the process-technology facet (for example, treatment with chemical substances) of interest. As Fox and Reece (2012) discuss, one way to incorporate users' perspectives into static systems (in order to make the system "hospitable, with mitigation") is to use tags and controlled vocabulary in tandem (Kipp and Campbell 2010;Spiteri 2006). ...
Bowker and Star (1999) remind us that there is a moral and ethical agenda involved in querying classifications. In this paper I discuss how we can apply this argument to everyday life classifications, such as government produced food guides, in order to investigate the moral and ethical choices that are built into these technologies. While scholars have shown that everyday life classification processes can point out the limitations of everyday life classification technologies, in this paper I discuss how the food classificatory practices of 18 Canadian registered dietitians reinforce the understandings of health offered by Canada's food guide, at times to the detriment of those with non-standard understandings of health. While, in this study, registered dietitians' understandings of health did not address the limitations of Canada's food guide, I also discuss registered dietitians' suggestions for how the food guide could be modified to accommodate non-standard understandings of health. Similar to Olson's (2002) techniques for breaching limits, these suggestions offer a starting point for developing an ethical relationship with those individuals and communities whose understandings of health are not represented by the food guide.
... Within the context of epistemological involvement of KO methods and tools the considerable attention is also drawn to folksonomies and social indexing which enable the representation of subjective knowledge -the cognitive perspective of the user (e.g. Adler, 2012;Kipp and Campbell, 2010;Mai, 2011a). ...
There are two most important trends observed in research on knowledge organization (KO) and in the development of knowledge organization systems (KOS) used in practice, i.e. semantization and standardization. These two trends determine current approaches to the development of methods and tools for organizing access to the digitally recorded knowledge in information systems and networks. Fundamental for the semantization of knowledge records is the creation and use of KOS with strong semantics which enable accurate representation of meanings in specified contexts. Standardization requires the unification of methods and tools for representing knowledge recorded in information resources. In practice it is often achieved by the use of universal KOS and implies generalization and homogenization of content representation that makes difficult to identify different interpretation of the phenomena and problems discussed in particular epistemological and cultural contexts. It is argued that the standardization of methods and tools for the representation of knowledge resources accessible in digital environment should not and does not have to imply this kind of generalization and simplification of the representation of their semantic content.
... These results indicate that a category-based approach is a successful way to provide access to image collections." Kipp and Campbell [29] found that "Users would find direct access to the thesaurus or list of subject headings showing articles indexed with these terms to be a distinct asset in search." Hearst [23] concluded that "Usability results show that users do not like disorderly groupings like [those produced by clustering systems], preferring understandable hierarchies in which categories are presented at uniform levels of granularity." ...
The New York Times Annotated Corpus, the ACM Digital Library, and PubMed are three prototypical examples of document collections in which each document is tagged with keywords or phrases. Such collections can be viewed as high-dimensional document cubes against which browsers and search systems can be applied in a manner similar to online analytical processing against data cubes. After examining the tagging patterns in these collections, a partial materialization strategy is developed to provide efficient storage and access to centroids for document subsets that are defined through queries over tags. By adopting this strategy, summary measures dependent on centroids (including measures involving medoids, sets of representative documents, or sets of representative terms) can be efficiently computed. The proposed design is evaluated on the three collections and on several synthetically generated collections to validate that it outperforms alternative storage strategies.
... For example, when an item of knowledge is marked by tag 'bus', it is considered to be sorted into the category 'bus' while an upper category like 'transport' or subcategory like 'minibus' may be also available. Tags of KOS and their structure work as dynamic knowledge organization access [3]. Users are able to annotate sharing knowledge in KOS by predefined and recommended tags. ...
Knowledge organization systems need tags to centralize and provide the keywords that can be employed in classifying, sharing and seeking knowledge for personal or organizational use. However, the increased variety of vocabularies and languages causes the connections between textual tags and the documents marked by them to become less and less distinctive. The purpose of this paper is to present an exploratory study on new type of knowledge tags: structured iconic tags. This kind of tag is created based on the special graphical rule - Visual Distinctive Language (VDL) - and has particular focus on the representation of tag structure. A tagging on paper' experiment was conducted to compare tagging results among three types of tags: textual tags, iconic tags without explicit structure and VDL-based iconic tags. Experimental results demonstrated that the new type of iconic tags improves the representation of tag structure as well as the interpretation of tag meaning. This work is one of the first to investigate how icons would be applied for tagging and what kind of graphical code would better represent knowledge organization. Findings in this paper could enrich the tagging method, which in turn provides a possible way to develop a visual knowledge organization system and iconic tag clouds for digital library.
... For example, reserve collections could circulate among students more easily if a professor tagged the appropriate content with tags containing the title of the course. Sinclair and Cardew-Hall (2008, p. 18) found that tag clouds can help those who search information through a folksonomy's dataset, while Kipp and Campbell (2010) stated that users make the use of tags while searching for information. Pera et al. (2009Pera et al. ( , p. 1393) eagerly dismissed the importance of the "traditional" library catalogue; they argued about its ineffectiveness (e.g. a time-consuming process, difficulty in formulating search queries and irrelevant searches) in supporting the need to implement a tagging system. ...
Early literature on tagging has been enthusiastic about the potential that it holds for libraries. Theorists have thoroughly analyzed the nature of tags, as well as the benefits and the problems for libraries: the positives and the negatives of tags compared to subject headings, how tagging can help libraries increase the findability of documents, what the benefits from user-created vocabulary are, and so on. However, there is a gap in the knowledge of how tags actually work within the professional context of libraries. More evidence is needed if the library community is to understand whether tags present an exciting opportunity for libraries. The purpose of this paper is to review the literature regarding the implementation of the tagging process primarily in library catalogs. The aim is to document evidence regarding this particular service within the range of library services provided to users.
... Margaret will act as moderator and panellist. She has expertise in the evaluation of the retrieval effectiveness of folksonomies as well as in analyzing similarities and differences between folksonomic terms and controlled vocabularies (Kipp, 2005;Kipp, 2011;Kipp & Campbell, 2010). Moreover, she researches the unconventional use of tags as task-, person-and time markers (e.g. ...
The purpose of this panel is to look back on seven years of research on folksonomies and tagging systems and to summarize its main contributions as well as to try forecasting the evolution folksonomies will make in the future. Research findings which show the advantages and drawbacks of folksonomies and tagging systems in various scenarios and which may reduce the reluctance of the professional side will be presented. Additionally, the panellists and audience will discuss the new breed of “folksonomies” formed by hashtags, geo-tags, system-tags etc. in order to find the best definitions for folksonomies and folksonomy-like structures.
... For example, when an item of knowledge is marked by tag "bus," it is considered to be sorted into the category "bus," while upper categories such as "transport," or sub-categories such as "minibus," might also be available. Tags of KOS and their structure work as dynamic knowledge organization access (Kipp and Campbell 2010). Users are able to annotate sharing knowledge in KOS by predefined and recommended tags. ...
VDL (Visual Distinctive Language)-based iconic knowledge tags are graphically structured icons for knowledge representation. VDL was developed and assessed to enhance the connection of iconic tags and the connection of tagged knowledge. The purpose of this paper is to present further investigation on an arrange- ment method for these special tags as well as the characteristics of better tag presentation in knowledge or- ganization systems (KOS). An online experiment was conducted to compare tagging results of four types of iconic tag presentations: two types of iconic tags (VDL-based iconic tags and iconic tags without explicit struc- ture) under two arrangement methods respectively (random arrangement and semantic arrangement). Tagging quality and tagging speed were measured to identify how users locate and locate again appropriate iconic tags for knowledge tagging. A supplementary test on tag structure identification was also carried out for each tag presentation. Semantic arrangement of VDL-based icons helped users to tag given articles with more appropriate tags in less time. Users identified better tag structure in this type of tag presentation. This in-depth work of VDL-based iconic tags is among the first to investigate how to visually structure knowledge tags, a problem neglected by previous studies on icon knowledge representation.
... However, unlike professional index terms and folksonomies, #hashtag use is far more transient since tweets quickly come and go. Thus, unlike folksonomies, such as on social bookmarking sites (Kipp, 2010), and controlled index terms, as used in bibliographic description (Saracevic, 2007), conceptualizing them as expressions of aboutness and as having an indexing function is much more constrained by their temporality. This mostly likely explains why #hashtags are not, at present, used in any formal retrieval system, although, as Huang, Thornton, and Efthimiadis (2010) indicate, the acquisition of the Twitter archives by the Library of Congress implies that tweets will at a future point be searchable and that user behavior may change. ...
This paper reports on a case study of Twitter posts (tweets) by chatterboxers to study whether theories of organization of information are applicable to the study of user-supplied labels in Twitter. Chatterboxing is the act of watching a televised event such as the Super Bowl and using a second screen to engage with others, primarily in real time. Researchers have used communication theory as a framework for study of Twitter, considering both #hashtags and @mentions to be primarily communicative. To ascertain whether #hashtags may be fundamentally different and amenable to study as organizational conventions as well, we first compared differences between usage of #hashtags and @mentions during the Super Bowl by taking tweets from three locations identified as heavily invested in the event (hometowns of the teams and the location of the game: Boston, NYC, Indianapolis) and tweets from locations that were not invested (Dallas, Miami, Seattle). Non-parametric statistical comparisons were made between tweets from the three invested and non-invested groups to ascertain whether the uses of labeling conventions were identical. Next a qualitative analysis of a subset of non-location specific tweets supplied information about the content of tweets, the aboutness of #hashtags, and the placement of #hashtags in the tweets. Our findings indicate that #hashtags and @mentions do have two separate functions but that location has a positive influence on their statistical dependency. We also find that #hashtags are used as organizational mechanisms and can reflect aboutness. Specifically, #hashtags are used to describe in order to categorize and to retrieve in order to follow or join a conversation, and future studies should be able to use theories of organization of information to analyze these labels as a way of complementing their otherwise communicative nature.
... However, the existence of non-subject-related tags may impede the application of social tagging in traditional library cataloguing systems. Kipp and Campbell [22] examined the usefulness of social tags in the process of information retrieval. They found that users used tags in their search process as guides to searching and as hyperlinks to potentially useful articles, just as they used controlled vocabularies in the journal database to locate useful search terms and to link to related articles supplied by the database. ...
The literature often views the emergence of social tagging as a potential alternative method to controlled vocabulary for organizing and indexing large-scale information resources. In this paper, we present an in-depth examination of the relationship between social tagging and controlled vocabulary-based indexing and organization in two unique contexts: the information science domain and when comparing data gathered from both English and Chinese sources. Our results show that the information science domain has more overlap between social tags and controlled vocabulary-based subject terms. This is reflected in the higher percentage of overlapping terms between tags and subject terms, as well as in the strong similarity (measured by Jaccard’s coefficient) in frequently used keywords among tags and subject terms. However, social tags in the information science domain still possess limitations in terms of uncontrolled terms, where inconsistencies and noisy usages exist. Our results also show that language difference does have an impact on social tagging. The numbers of Chinese tags overall and per book are less than those of English tags. The most frequently used English tags are single-word terms, which are different from multi-word controlled vocabulary terms. In comparison, the character difference between the most frequently used Chinese tags and Chinese subject terms is just one character (3 vs 4). However, English and Chinese users do share many similar behaviours when they tag books in the information science domain. Many of the most frequently used tags are shared between the two languages and the patterns of overlap between topical tags and subject terms are also similar between the two languages. Overall, despite the application limitations for social tagging in cataloguing and indexing, we believe that tagging has the potential to become a complementary resource for expanding and enriching controlled vocabulary systems. With the help of future technology to regulate and promote features related to controlled vocabulary in social tags, a hybrid cataloguing and indexing system that integrates social tags with controlled vocabulary would greatly improve people’s organizational and access capabilities within information resources.
... Now, users can access information anywhere there is an Internet connection, and the organization and control of information is not limited to information professionals or libraries. Due to the amount of information available on the Web and the sheer size of digital collections, it has proven difficult to use controlled vocabularies when indexing digital information (Kipp, 2010;Redden, 2010). Additionally, "it is often difficult for library users to formulate a proper query using specific keywords assigned to different fields of desired library catalogue records" (Lu, Park, & Hu, 2010, p. 768). ...
The information environment is rapidly changing, affecting the ways in which information is organized and accessed. User needs and expectations have also changed due to the overwhelming influence of Web 2.0 tools. Conventional information systems no longer support evolving user needs. Based on current research, we explore a method that integrates the structure of controlled languages with the flexibility and adaptability of social tagging. This article discusses the current research and usage of social tagging and Web 2.0 applications within the academic library. Types of tags, the semiotics of tagging and its influence on indexing are covered.
... Retrievalforschung im Kontext von Folksonomies konzentriert sich im Wesentlichen auf die Überschneidung von Tag-Vokabular und kontrolliertem Vokabular (Kipp, 2011), Relevance Ranking auf Basis von Folksonomies (Hotho et al., 2006) oder Suchfunktionen von Tags in Kombination mit der Suche in bibliographischen Metadaten und kontrolliertem Vokabular (Kipp & Campbell, 2010 Hotho et al., 2006). In Broad Folksonomies ist das mehrfache Vergeben eines Tags zu einer Ressource möglich. ...
Zusammenfassung Social Tagging ist eine weitverbreitete Methode, um nutzergenerierte Inhalte in Webdiensten zu indexieren. Dieser Artikel fasst die aktuelle Forschung zu Folksonomies und Effektivität von Tags in Retrievalsystemen zusammen. Es wurde ein TREC-ähnlicher Retrievaltest mit Tags und Ressourcen aus dem Social Bookmarking-Dienst delicious durchgeführt, welcher in Recall- und Precision- werten für ausschließlich Tag-basierte Suchen resultierte. Außerdem wurden Tags in verschiedenen Stufen bereinigt und auf ihre Retrieval-Effektivität getestet. Testergebnisse zeigen, dass Retrieval in Folksonomies am besten mit kurzen Anfragen funktioniert. Hierbei sind die Recallwerte hoch, die Precisionwerte jedoch eher niedrig. Die Suchfunktion „power tags only“ liefert verbesserte Precisionwerte. Abstract Social tagging is a widespread activity for indexing user-generated content on Web services. This paper summarizes research on folksonomies and their retrieval effectiveness. A TREC-like retrieval test was conducted with tags and resources from the social bookmarking system delicious, which resulted in recall and precision values for tag-only searches. Moreover, several experimen- tal tag-based databases (i. e., power tags, Luhn-tags) have been tested regarding their retrieval effectiveness. Test results show that folksonomies work best with short queries although recall values are high and precision values are low. Here, a search function “power tags only” greatly enhances precision values.
... Retrieval research in context of folksonomies mainly looks at overlaps between tag vocabulary and controlled vocabulary (Kipp, 2011), relevance ranking based on folksonomic structures (Hotho et al., 2006) or tags as search functionality in combination with search in bibliographic metadata and controlled keywords (Kipp & Campbell, 2010). Closest related to our study is the work of Lu and Kipp (2010) who also carried out a retrieval test with folksonomies. ...
Social tagging is a widespread activity for indexing user-generated content on Web services. This paper summarizes research on folksonomies and their retrieval effectiveness. A TREC-like retrieval test was conducted with tags and resources from the social bookmarking system delicious, which resulted in recall and precision values for tag-only searches. Moreover, several experimental tag-based databases (i.e., power tags, Luhn-tags) have been tested regarding their retrieval effectiveness. Test results show that folksonomies work best with short queries although recall values are high and precision values are low. Here, a search function "power tags only" greatly enhances precision values.
The use of mixed methods in library and information science research is more effective in generating insightful results when the methods are fully integrated with each other. A novel sequential mixed methods approach was developed to more holistically study user search behavior within a library discovery system. Customized semi-structured interview protocols, using the critical incident technique, were based on each participant's search logs. Findings from the interviews informed statistical log analysis, which identified features of search sessions that made accessing resources more likely. Individual interviews provide more precise data when protocols are created using the participants' logs. Similarly, statistical log analyses are enhanced with users' descriptions of their behaviors in library discovery systems. While prior studies have employed both interviews and log analysis, using the methods to inform one another reduces the limitations and enhances the benefits of each.
The emergence of social networks and phenomena such as tagging have led to
changes in the structure, language, and content of information. The purpose of this
study was to analysis of discourse of digital information organization in social
tagging. Discourse analysis by Laclau and Mouffe's was used as a research method.
LibraryThing were chosen with purposive sampling. End-user as a nodal point
located in the center of semantic systems of digital information discourse, language,
cataloging, and members were elements articulated around the end-user. Popularity,
commonness, participatory, locality, relativeness, fluidity and independence from
professional catalogers and standards of cataloging were identified as a features of
cataloging. Easiness, unlocality, flatness and lack of specific precondition were the
features of membership in this database. Language and narration of end-users were a
dominate in this database but language and narration of elite in modern discourse of
traditional library organization was marginalized. Tags are an important
phenomenon for presentation the user language and construction of the database.
Uncontrolled, relative, non-standard, unofficial and De-authorized languages of end
–users provide suitable status for deconstructive interpretations from the texts in
libraryThing. Classification, updatness, being free and Non-profits were the
moments of information organization discourse in libraryThing. Features of modern
discourse of information organization such as obsolescence, hierarchical,
authoritarianism are rejecting to the field of discursivity. Discourse of digital
information organization articulation in contrast with modern systems of
information organization in libraries.
Keywords: Discourse, Information Organization, Tagging, LibraryThing, Laclau
and Mouffe discourse analysis
The study attempts to compare user-generated social tags with expert-generated LCSH descriptors of one thousand sociology books. The objective is to examine if social tags can be used to enhance the accessibility of library collections. The study found that both datasets do not follow the same vocabulary. Though, the Spearmans' rank correlation (0.89) indicates a good association between common terms in both vocabularies. The Jaccard similarity coefficient (J = 0.13, 0.14, 0.17, 0.15 and 0.16) in different word clusters proves that top frequent social tags and top frequent LCSH descriptors used by users and experts are different. The comparison with each book also reveals that 555 books (55.5%) have 50 to 100 percent matching between both vocabularies. LCSH descriptor vocabulary contains more subject terms (24) than social tag vocabulary (12) out of the top thirty frequent terms. The comparison of social tags with MARC subfields (a, x, y, z, y) for tags or use different terms other than experts for chronological information. Further, comparison with each book title reveals that social tags alongside LCSH descriptors can enhance the title-based search of libraries. Moreover, the study suggests that usage of social tags will not only enhance the accessibilities of library resources under sociology but also complement to controlled vocabularies by supplementing a variety of terms other than experts.
The purpose of this study is to understand users' motivations and intentions in the use of institutional collections on social tagging sites. Previous social tagging studies have collected social tagging data and analyzed how tagging functions as a tool to organize and retrieve information. Many studies focused on the patterns of tagging rather than the users' perspectives. To provide a more comprehensive picture of users' social tagging activities in institutional collections, and how this compares to social tagging in a more personal context, we collected data from social tagging users by surveying 7,563 participants in the Library of Congress's Flickr Collection. We asked users to describe their motivations for activities within the LC Flickr Collection in their own words using open-ended questions. As a result, we identified 11 motivations using a bottom-up, open-coding approach: affective reactions, opinion on photo, interest in subject, contribution to description, knowledge sharing, improving findability, social network, appreciation, personal use, and personal relationship. Our study revealed that affective or emotional reactions play a critical role in the use of social tagging of institutional collections by comparing our findings to existing frameworks for tagging motivations. We also examined the relationships between participants' occupations and our 11 motivations.
PurposeThis chapter aims to discuss the issues associated with social indexing as a solution to the challenges of current information organization systems by investigating the quality and efficacy of social indexing.
Design/methodology/approachThe chapter focuses on the study which compared indexing similarity between two professional groups and also compared social tagging and professional indexing. The study employed the method of the modified vector-based Indexing Consistency Density (ICD) with three different similarity measures: cosine similarity, dot product similarity, and Euclidean distance metric.
FindingsThe investigation of social indexing in comparison of professional indexing demonstrates that social tags are more accurate descriptions of resources and reflection of more current terminology than controlled vocabulary. Through the characteristics of social tagging discussed in this chapter, we have a clearer understanding of the extent to which social indexing can be used to replace and improve upon professional indexing.
Research limitations/implicationsAs investment in professionally developed web directories diminishes, it becomes even more critical to understand the characteristics of social tagging and to obtain benefit from it. In future research, the examination of subjective tags needs to be conducted. A survey or user study on tagging behavior also would help to extend understanding of social indexing practices.
The purpose of the study was to investigate social tagging practice in science book context. In addition, it identified the usefulness of social tags as supplementary of controlled vocabulary to enhance the use of library resources. More specifically, this study examined to know to what extent the social tags match with controlled vocabulary, and whether or not any additional perception is provided by social tags to improve the accessibility and information retrieval in a digital environment. In both cases, the social tags were considered with respect to the appropriateness to the specific book. For the successful implementation of social tagging in library systems, there is a need to understand how users assign social tags to library collections, what vocabularies they use and how far the social tag relates to controlled vocabulary. This understanding can help libraries to decide on how to implement and review the social tagging.
This study used a combination of both qualitative and quantitative research approaches. The LibraryThing website and Library of Congress Subject Headings were considered as a research site. Social tags have been collected from the LibraryThing website and LCSHs has been considered as controlled vocabulary. Twenty books from the science genre have been chosen purposefully. The sample has further been considered to include only those books that have also been available in the Library of Congress catalogue. Ten books have been taken from the academic group and the remaining were from the non-academic group. This study took into consideration only those social tags that occurred at least twice.
A coding system has been developed to pull together all the similar social tags for further analysis. In the coding system, four broad categories have been defined, e.g., Social tags that match exactly with LCSHs, Social tags that match partially with LCSHs, Social tags that reflect bibliographic information and social tags that are user specific information. The last three categories were further sub-categorized.
It is found that there is a clear difference between assigning expert created subject terms and social tagging practice to library books. Cataloguers assigned relatively few terms per book through the use of restricted and established vocabulary following firm rules, whereas, the end users enjoyed liberty with unlimited terms. More than fifty percent of social tags matched with expert created subject headings. The frequency of use of the social tags that matched with LCSHs terms was higher than the non-matched ones. The expert created subject headings were highly ranked in the social tags' lists, where end users more frequently assigned social tags that represented broader or narrower terms than the cataloguers’ assigned subject headings. In addition, the social tagging represented other aspects that could not be either covered within the strict subject headings assigned rules or cataloguing rules. Such diverse impressions can be seen as an access point to the same library collections according to users’ interest and opinions.
This study revealed that as a standalone tool neither the controlled vocabulary nor the social tagging practice can work like a satisfactory information retrieval tool. A hybrid catalogue with combining both LCSHs and social tags would give its patrons the best of both worlds in terms of access to materials. This kind of practice may give more significant outcome for local research or university libraries where the users are more concentrated on a defined number of disciplines. Adapting users’ views in addition to controlled vocabulary through social tags may increase the efficiency of information retrieval process in library OPAC.
This study implied both qualitative and quantitative support for the use of social tags in the library OPACs. The findings support many of the previous theories proposed in literature about social tagging and LCSHs. The qualitative analysis of social tags disclosed the diverse way of looking at the library resources by the end users in addition to subject descriptors.
In their 2005 study, Gross and Taylor found that more than a third of records retrieved by keyword searches would be lost without subject headings. A review of the literature since then shows that numerous studies, in various disciplines, have found that a quarter to a third of records returned in a keyword search would be lost without controlled vocabulary. Other writers, though, have continued to suggest that controlled vocabulary be discontinued. Addressing criticisms of the Gross/Taylor study, this study replicates the search process in the same online catalog, but after the addition of automated enriched metadata such as tables of contents and summaries. The proportion of results that would be lost remains high.
This study investigates the retrieval effectiveness of collaborative tags and author keywords in different environments through controlled experiments. Three test collections were built. The first collection tests the impact of tags on retrieval performance when only the title and abstract are available (the abstract environment). The second tests the impact of tags when the full text is available (the full-text environment). The third compares the retrieval effectiveness of tags and author keywords in the abstract environment. In addition, both single-word queries and phrase queries are tested to understand the impact of different query types. Our findings suggest that including tags and author keywords in indexes can enhance recall but may improve or worsen average precision depending on retrieval environments and query types. Indexing tags and author keywords for searching using phrase queries in the abstract environment showed improved average precision, whereas indexing tags for searching using single-word queries in the full-text environment led to a significant drop in average precision. The comparison between tags and author keywords in the abstract environment indicates that they have comparable impact on average precision, but author keywords are more advantageous in enhancing recall. The findings from this study provide useful implications for designing retrieval systems that incorporate tags and author keywords.
Los gestores de referencias sociales automatizan una tarea repetitiva y tediosa como es la gestión bibliográfica, y ofrecen una alternativa a los motores de búsqueda y bases de datos tradicionales en favor de la mediación social y el descubrimiento científico. Se hace una reflexión sobre las implicaciones del etiquetado social en los procesos de gestión de información bibliográfica personal en el entorno 2.0 y se analizan dos de las aplicaciones más populares, aunque todavía poco conocidas y utilizadas en España: CiteULike y Connotea
A new collaborative approach in information organization and sharing has recently arisen, known as collaborative tagging or social indexing. A key element of collaborative tagging is the concept of collective intelligence (CI), which is a shared intelligence among all participants. This research investigates the phenomena of social tagging in the context of CI with the aim to serve as a stepping-stone towards the mining of truly valuable social tags for Web resources. This study focuses on assessing and evaluating the degree of collective intelligence embedded in social tagging over time in terms of two-parameter values, number of participants and top frequency ranking window. Five different metrics are adopted and utilized for assessing the similarity between ranking lists: overlapList, overlapRank, Footrule, Fagin’s measure, and Inverse Rank measure. The result of this study demonstrates that a substantial degree of CI is most likely to be achieved when somewhere between the first 200 and 400 people have participated in tagging, and that a target degree of CI can be projected along the lines by controlling the two factors along with the selection of a similarity metric. The study also tests some experimental conditions for detecting social tags with high CI degree. The results of this study can be applicable to the study of filtering social tags based on collective intelligence; filtered social tags may be utilized for the metadata creation of tagged resources and possibly for the retrieval of tagged resources.
The literature of the evaluation of Internet search engines is reviewed. Although there have been many studies, there has been little consistency in the way such studies have been carried out. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that recall is virtually impossible to calculate in the fast changing Internet environment, and therefore the traditional Cranfield type of evaluation is not usually possible. A variety of alternative evaluation methods has been suggested to overcome this difficulty. The authors recommend that a standardised set of tools is developed for the evaluation of web search engines so that, in future, comparisons can be made between search engines more effectively, and that variations in performance of any given search engine over time can be tracked. The paper itself does not provide such a standard set of tools, but it investigates the issues and makes preliminary recommendations of the types of tools needed.
This paper reports on an exploratory study of how university students perceive and interact with Web search engines compared to Web-based OPACs. A qualitative study was conducted involving sixteen students, eight of whom were first-year undergraduates and eight of whom were graduate students in Library and Information Science. The participants performed searches on Google and on a university OPAC. The interviews and think-afters revealed that while students were aware of the problems inherent in Web searching and of the many ways in which OPACS are more organized, they generally preferred Web searching. The coding of the data suggests that the reason for this preference lies in psychological factors associated with the comparative ease with which search engines can be used, and system and interface factors which made searching the Web much easier and less confusing. As a result of these factors, students were able to approach even the drawbacks of the Web—its clutter of irrelevant pages and the dubious authority of the results—in an enthusiastic and proactive manner, very different from the passive and ineffectual admiration they expressed for the OPAC. The findings suggest that requirements of good OPAC interface design must be aggressively redefined in the face of new, Web-based standards of usability.
This study explored how user-supplied tags can be applied to designing a thesaurus that reflects the unique features of image documents. Tags from the popular image-sharing Web site Flickr were examined in terms of two central components of a thesaurus—selected concepts and their semantic relations—as well as the features of image documents. Shatford’s facet category and Rosch et al.’s basic-level theory were adopted for examining concepts to be included in a thesaurus. The results suggested that the best approach to Color and Generic category descriptors is to focus on basic-level terms and to include frequently used superordinate- and subordinate-level terms. In the Abstract category, it was difficult to specify a set of abstract terms that can be used consistently and dominantly, so it was suggested to enhance browsability using hierarchical and associative relations. Study results also indicate a need for greater inclusion of Specific category terms, which were shown to be an important tool in establishing related tags. Regarding semantic relations, the study indicated that in the identification of related terms, it is important that descriptors not be limited only to the category in which a main entry belongs but broadened to include terms from other categories as well. Although future studies are needed to ensure the effectiveness of this user-oriented approach, this study yielded promising results, demonstrating that user-supplied tags can be a helpful tool in selecting concepts to be included in a thesaurus and in identifying semantic relations among the selected concepts. It is hoped that the results of this study will provide a practical guideline for designing a thesaurus for image documents that takes into account both the unique features of these documents and the unique information-seeking behaviors of general users.
Documentation of art museum collections has been traditionally written by and for art historians. To make art museum collections broadly accessible, and to enable art museums to engage their communities, means of access need to reflect the perspectives of other groups and communities. Social Tagging (the collective assignment of keywords to resources) and its resulting Folksonomy (the assemblage of concepts expressed in such a cooperatively developed system of classification) offer ways for art museums to engage with their communities and to understand what users of online museum collections see as important. Proof of Concept studies at The Metropolitan Museum of Art compared terms assigned by trained cataloguers and untrained cataloguers to existing museum documentation, and explored the potential for social tagging to improve access to museum collections. These preliminary studies, the results of which are reported here, have shown the potential of social tagging and folksonomy to open museum collections to new, more personal meanings. Untrained cataloguers identified content elements not described in formal museum documentation. Results from these tests—the first in the domain—provided validation for exploring social tagging and folksonomy as an access strategy within The Metropolitan Museum, motivation to proceed with a broader inter-institutional collaboration, and input into the development of a multi-institutional collaboration exploring tagging in art museums. Tags assigned by users might help bridge the semantic gap between the professional discourse of the curator and the popular language of the museum visitor. The steve collaboration (http://www.steve.museum) is building on these early studies to develop shared tools and research methods that enable social tagging of art museum collections and explore the utility of folksonomy for providing enhanced access to collections.
This paper describes a series of interviews focusing on the way professional and clerical office workers organize the information in their desks and offices. A number of implications for designing "natural" and convenient computer-based information systems are discussed. Two principal claims are made: (1) A very important function of desk organization is to remind the user of things to do, not just to help the user find desired information. Failing to support this function may seriously impair the usefulness of electronic office systems, and explicitly facilitating it may provide an important advantage for automated office systems over their nonautomated predecessors. (2) The cognitive difficulty of categorizing information is an important factor in explaining how people organize their desks. Computer-based systems may help with this difficulty by (a) doing as much automatic classification as possible (e.g., based on access dates}, and (b) including untitled "piles" of information arranged by physical location as well as explicitly titled and logically arranged "files." Several other implications for the design of electronic office systems are discussed, and some differences in how people organize their desks are described.
This paper examines the context of online indexing from the viewpoint of three different groups: users, authors, and intermediaries. User, author and intermediary keywords were collected from journal articles tagged on citeulike and analysed. Descriptive statistics and thesaural term comparison shows that there are important differences in the context of keywords from the three groups.Cet article examine le contexte de l’indexation en ligne du point de vu de trois groupes : les usagers, les auteurs, et les intermédiaires. Les mots-clés des usagers, des auteurs et des intermédiaires tirés des articles de périodiques ont été étiquetés avec CiteULike et analysés. Les statistiques descriptives et la comparaison des termes thésauraux montrent qu'il existe des différences importantes entre le contexte des mots-clés provenant des trois groupes. ***Student to CAIS/ACSI Award Winner***
Classification is a transdisciplinary activity that occurs during all human pursuits. Classificatory activity, however, serves different purposes in different situations. In information retrieval, the primary purpose of classification is to find knowledge that already exists, but one of the purposes of classification in other fields is to discover new knowledge. In this paper, classifications for information retrieval are called "professional" classifications because they are devised by people who have a professional interest in classification, and classifications for knowledge discovery are called "naïve" classifications because they are devised by people who have no particular interest in studying classification as an end in itself. This paper compares the overall purposes and methods of these two kinds of classifications and provides a general model of the relationships between the two kinds of classificatory activity in the context of information studies. This model addresses issues of the influence of scholarly activity and communication on the creation and revision of classifications for the purposes of information retrieval and for the purposes of knowledge discovery. Further comparisons elucidate the relationships between the universality of classificatory methods and the specific purposes served by naïve and professional classification systems.
The investigation dealt with the effect which different devices have on the performance of index languages. It appeared that the most important consideration was the specificity of the index terms; within the context of the conditions existing in this test, single-word terms were more effective than concept terms or a controlled vocabulary.
The purpose of this selected bibliography is to introduce issues and problems in relation to thesaurus construction and to present a set of readings that may be used in practical thesaurus design. The concept of thesaurus is discussed, including the purpose of the thesaurus and how the concept has evolved over the years according to new IR technologies. Different approaches to thesaurus construction are introduced, and readings dealing with specific problems and developments in the collection, formation, and organisation of thesaurus concepts and terms are presented. Primarily manual construction methods are discussed, but the bibliography also refers to research about techniques for automatic thesaurus construction.
Purpose
– This paper seeks to report an investigation into the ways in which end‐users perceive a thesaurus‐enhanced search interface, in particular thesaurus and search interface usability.
Design/methodology/approach
– Thirty academic users, split between staff and postgraduate students, carrying out real search requests were observed during this study. Users were asked to comment on a range of thesaurus and interface characteristics including: ease of use, ease of learning, ease of browsing and navigation, problems and difficulties encountered while interacting with the system, and the effect of browsing on search term selection.
Findings
– The results suggest that interface usability is a factor affecting thesaurus browsing/navigation and other information‐searching behaviours. Academic staff viewed the function of a thesaurus as being useful for narrowing down a search and providing alternative search terms, while postgraduates stressed the role of the thesaurus for broadening searches and providing new terms.
Originality/value
– The paper provides an insight into the ways in which end‐users make use of and interact with a thesaurus‐enhanced search interface. This area is new since previous research has particularly focused on how professional searchers and librarians make use of thesauri and thesaurus‐enhanced search interfaces. The research reported here suggests that end‐users with varying levels of domain knowledge are able to use thesauri that are integrated into search interfaces. It also provides design implications for search interface developers as well as information professionals who are involved in teaching online searching.
The study reported here investigated the query expansion behavior of end-users interacting with a thesaurus-enhanced search system on the Web. Two groups, namely academic staff and postgraduate students, were recruited into this study. Data were collected from 90 searches performed by 30 users using the OVID interface to the CAB abstracts database. Data-gathering techniques included questionnaires, screen capturing software, and interviews. The results presented here relate to issues of search-topic and search-term characteristics, number and types of expanded queries, usefulness of thesaurus terms, and behavioral differences between academic staff and postgraduate students in their interaction. The key conclusions drawn were that (a) academic staff chose more narrow and synonymous terms than did postgraduate students, who generally selected broader and related terms; (b) topic complexity affected users' interaction with the thesaurus in that complex topics required more query expansion and search term selection; (c) users' prior topic-search experience appeared to have a significant effect on their selection and evaluation of thesaurus terms; (d) in 50% of the searches where additional terms were suggested from the thesaurus, users stated that they had not been aware of the terms at the beginning of the search; this observation was particularly noticeable in the case of postgraduate students.
The authors present a model of information searching in thesaurus-enhanced search systems, intended as a reference model for system developers. The model focuses on user-system interaction and charts the specific stages of searching an indexed collection with a thesaurus. It was developed based on literature, findings from empirical studies, and analysis of existing systems. The model describes in detail the entities, processes, and decisions when interacting with a search system augmented with a thesaurus. A basic search scenario illustrates this process through the model. Graphical and textual depictions of the model are complemented by a concise matrix representation for evaluation purposes. Potential problems at different stages of the search process are discussed, together with possibilities for system developers. The aim is to set out a framework of processes, decisions, and risks involved in thesaurus-based search, within which system developers can consider potential avenues for support.
The field of subject analysis enjoyed a flurry of interest in the 1970s, and has recently become a focus of attention again. The scholarly community doing work in this area has become more diffuse, and has grown to include new groups, such as information architects. Changes in information services and information seeking have led to reexamination of the nature and role of subject analysis tools and practices. This selective review looks at thesauri, guided navigation, and folksonomy as three activity areas in which subject analysis researchers have been attempting to address rapidly changing new environments. published or submitted for publication
This is the first part of a two-part article that reviews 25 years of published research findings on end-user searching in online information retrieval (IR) systems. In Part 1 (Markey, 2007 ), the author seeks to answer the following questions: What characterizes the queries that end users submit to online IR systems? What search features do people use? What features would enable them to improve on the retrievals they have in hand? What features are hardly ever used? What do end users do in response to the system's retrievals? Are end users satisfied with their online searches? Summarizing searches of online IR systems by the search features people use everyday makes information retrieval appear to be a very simplistic one-stop event. In Part 2, the author examines current models of the information retrieval process, demonstrating that information retrieval is much more complex and involves changes in cognition, feelings, and/or events during the information seeking process. She poses a host of new research questions that will further our understanding about end-user searching of online IR systems. Peer Reviewed http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/56093/1/20462_ftp.pdf