Consumerpedia
March 24th, 2005Take a look at Consumerpedia and you’ll understand why I feel that communities should be more involved in the ILS systems that our libraries use:
“Consumerpedia has no built in category hierarchy, but rather uses a unique user-driven hierarchical tagging system. This lets users create and define the relationships between different topics, helping others easily discover and browse related information…the Consumerpedia system is designed so that it evolves based upon how actual users wish to use it, with the sole organizing principle being how helpful it is to others. “
Who uses our catalogs? Our patrons. So, why are they built for and by librarians? By having the community involved in how our catalogs are structured, they might actually make sense to the people who use it. Each library catalog will be unique to the community that helps to build it, with their own (un)structured taxonomies. Sure, there can be some underlying structure (I’m not a totally crazed lunatic), but why not contributions from our patrons in the form of open tagging structures to add to the existing catalog. It could work… (link via del.icio.us)