200 likes | 290 Views
User Responses to Social Bookmarking at MLibrary. Ken Varnum varnum@umich.edu 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
E N D
User Responses to Social Bookmarking at MLibrary Ken Varnum varnum@umich.edu 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 Always accessible Shared with others Build a common pool of knowledge
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
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
Inherits from Delicious.com Penn Tags Flickr Facebook Many other social bookmarking sites
What Is Different? Collections MLibrary (library web pages) Mirlyn (library catalog) Digital Images Scholarly Publishing Everything Else Integration with Site
How MTagger Is Used Tags are generally tagger-centric Exception: Librarians tag differently
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
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
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
Usability Study Conducted over four months in summer 2008 Two students at U-M School of Information Librarians on steering committee
Usability Recommendations Tag cloud display on pages Tag cloud display in MTagger Handling of “collections” Workflow
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
When It’s not Enough to Say,“I Tag You” Easier sharing: Tags Tagged items User lists Publish to other social networking tools
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?
Bigger Picture • Benefit to scale (delicious) • Benefit to academic focus • Mechanism needed for sharing tags across libraries
Thank You Email: varnum@umich.edu Blog: RSS4Lib http://www.rss4lib.com/ Usability Reports: http://www.lib.umich.edu/usability/projects/MTagger.html