Traditionally, cataloging has been done with a controlled vocabulary by trained professionals. Now Web 2.0 allows everyone to have their say. The obvious ramification is less precision in results when searching websites like Flickr or Delicious. However, it also gives the librarians insight into the user’s mindset. Librarians should use this trend to their advantage in their libraries. I read several articles and saw websites about libraries using social bookmarking to categorize new books that were received through websites such as Library Thing. Libraries also used websites such as delicious to communicate bookmarks that might be of use to patrons. The reality is social bookmarking is more user friendly than the library card catalog. Hopefully, there will come a day when this information can be integrated into the library card catalog to make it more accessible for users.
I also went to my delicious site, which is still very small, and then looked at the delicious sites of other users. While again precision in results is significantly less, this format was more helpful to me than subject headings would be. This format puts every possible tag that a website could possible have in one place. It makes is much easier to find a topic related to my search. I actually found that I preferred this to traditional subject headings.
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