A line that struck me when reading Dave Green's "Need To Know" (for those that don't, its an off-the-wall look at "that thar interweb", which occasionally offers something to make you sit up and feel very scared about our world!). Anyhow, Dave was commenting on some silly Google search misspellings (those that result in the "did you mean this?") and rounded it of with "you won't find heavy metal using 'dobly' ".
Now, for those with a rich knowledge of classic films, "dobly" comes from Spinal Tap, and is one of those all time funny moments from film that you either "were there for, or weren't" - basically rocker girlfriend mistakes "dobly" for "dolby" (noise reduction method on tapes) - its a lot funnier in context!
Got me thinking - why shouldn't I be able to enter "dobly" and get Spinal Tap back as my first hit? Why does Google tell me "Did you mean dolby" and bring me back lots of hi-fi sites? I know perfectly well what I meant, I meant "dobly" and I want a button so I can tell Google that I typed it right and to got get me some stuff about Spinal Tap.
This is indirectly about, you've guessed it, folksonomies again. Within the right community of shared knowledge, "dobly" is a valid word. In fact, it is more than a word - it is a shared experience, a moment in time, an emotional response, an example of stereotyped "rock chicks". In fact, not just "rock chicks" - I'd define it as "a moment when someone tries to join in a conversation with a group who have shared domain knowledge, and gets a word o-so slightly wrong and is relegated back to the group fringe". Its liking saying Phewey classification, instead of Dewey, to a gaggle of librarians.
The Oxford English Dictionary may not recognise it. Google may not either. But I do, and so does the entire community of Spinal Tap watchers. Which slices across all professions, sexes, races and ages. This is a PRIME example of why there is so much value in letting communities tag their content, against having "those on high" telling the community what terms they can and cannot use.
It's about time our profession started buying into this with the same passion we show for controlled and authorised headings. There is a lot of value we can add, in slicing and splicing these search tags and encouraging this "uncontrolled" practice. There may not be a place for "dobly" in the Library of Congress Subject Headings, but there is an equally important place for it within our domain. And, more importantly, in the domain of our customers and users...
1 comment:
This one goes to 11!
The big appeal for me as far as folksonomies are concerned is that that they allow communities to define their own terms.
Cat and class, as a process, exists in a vacuum divorced from The User. A good cataloguer - there are some, I've met them - takes care to place a resource within the context of the collection it sits in.
But that's only half the story. The other half, a half we're going to have to recognise, is about what people think when they take it away from that context, off the shelf, to their living rooms, beach holidays or wherever.
Folksonomies, derived from users' experiences and opinions, have the potential to add an extra layer to the process of resource discovery, through the OPAC or through any library resource for that matter.
There's obviously a (perceived) need for moderation, but will self-censorship work longer-term? I hope so.
Tap rules, btw.
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