Coordinators: Jes Koepfer and Naomi Szeben
Dates of activities: Sept. 29 - Oct. 3
Overview/Summary of our approach:
The knowledge community we will be discussing this week is that of the museum or library (informal learning institutions) and the collection it holds. How the keepers of that knowledge disseminate that content, or not, is the subject of debate. There is a movement in this field towards applying practices of folksonomy to increase the accessibility of these collections. Consider these arguments from the point of view of the curators and historians (the knowledge community that holds the knowledge) and the point of view of the user (the knowledge community that wants to access this knowledge).
Pre-class activities (motivation, specific format, outcomes)
Readings:
1. Feinberg, Melanie (2006). An Examination of Authority in Social Classification Systems. Advances in classification
research, Vol. 17: Proceedings of the 17th ASIS&T SIG/CR Classification Research Workshop, ed. Jonathan Furner and Joseph T. Tennis. READ ALL.
http://dlist.sir.arizona.edu/1783/01/feinberg.pdf Feinberg
2. Hayman, Sarah (2007, June 27-29). Folksonomies and Tagging: New developments in social bookmarking. Ark Group Conference: Developing and Improving Classification Schemes. READ PAGES 1-11.
http://www.educationau.edu.au/jahia/webdav/site/myjahiasite/shared/papers/arkhayman.pdf Hayman
3. Go to: http://steve.museum/index.php?option=com_content&task;=category§ionid;=20&id;=38&Itemid;=66 and read each paragraph associated with the linked subheadings for About Steve. Read from "What is Steve?" down through "How is the work
rmurEar.jpg!
In-class activities
Now imagine...
You go to the library and all you know about your book is that it's about elves... you think that the cover of the book is red... From this information, the reference librarian can not help you find your book.
You enter a video store, and you're thinking of this film by that guy, with that one actress who's blonde. It's funny, yet romantic at the same time...the clerk behind the counter can think of at least 20 movies that fit that description, but none of them are what you want.
You remember from a trip to an art museum when you were younger that there was this amazing painting with cherubs and lots of color andit was in a big frame...the Curator at the Art Museum begs you to come up with the year it was painted, or the artist's name, or even the medium in which it was created to narrow the search. Another scenario has you interpreting a painting one way, while the teacher insists it is about something else.
Pink Snow Bunny
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Unable to render embedded object: File (pinksnowbunnyverysmall.jpg) not found.
We will examine how this knowledge community (museums and libraries) can use this piece of social media (social tagging) to distribute and build its collective knowledge. Please come to class having gone through the readings, performed the activity (if you can not visit an ear, try to at least listen to one online), and prepared to discuss issues of authority, democratization, accuracy and more...
Introduction to the knowledge community and media:
Reflecting on the murmur experience: What is the difference between murmur and social tagging? Are they the same? Should they be held accountable for their editing decisions (each story has to be cut down to 2-4 mins.)? Where could murmur go: what if murmur started calling you, or made your cell phone beep any time a new ear or story was added to a preselected location?
Explaining the conflict in the museum (murmur and Fort York)
The social medium tool as a virtual and as an actual experience
What does social tagging mean to you?
How it is ongoing, fluid and current as opposed to static
Show 'snow bunnies' cartoon
Applying social media to a 'not so social' medium
Class Activity:
Steve
1. Open Steve in a new tab or window (hint: right click the link)
2. Click on "start tagging" (you do not need to register)
3. once inside Steve, copy the url info below in front of the http:// in your browser to go to this specific image (click on the image for a larger view):
Picture 1: tagger.steve.museum/steve.php?task=randomizedCollectionController_viewImageset&mimeId=882&imagesetId=17
4. Tag the picture with words that you think are relevant. Your tags will be immortalized in this research project.
5. Follow steps 1-4 with the rest of these urls.
Picture 2: tagger.steve.museum/steve.php?task=randomizedCollectionController_viewImageset&mimeId=929&imagesetId=17
Picture 3: tagger.steve.museum/steve.php?task=randomizedCollectionController_viewImageset&mimeId=1193&imagesetId=17
Picture 4: tagger.steve.museum/steve.php?task=randomizedCollectionController_viewImageset&mimeId=1081&imagesetId=14
Class questions (after class activity)
How did your image display? With other tags? With the curatorial label? Both? Other? How did that affect your tagging? (Because Steve is a research project they are testing the implementation of different versions of the Tagging tool to see how these pieces influence, or not, how people tag objects.)
Generational attitudes towards technology; how much of it is welcoming, inviting, or intimidating? The future of museums or libraries - will it be against or more welcoming towards technology?
Were tags misleading? Did you disagree with any of them? Were any of the tags arbitrary or vague?
What importance should the tagger place on the descriptor - what values are placed in that one word description? Should it be a physical description, or descriptive of the emotion it evokes, or something that is general - i.e. direct interpretation of what is seen at face value. (Ex. "The Scream" - tag: scream)
As it stands, what would you do with the tags steve has collected? Do you maintain a large, central open source database? Do you take the tags that your museum created and create your own separate database for your collection? Do you merge steve tags with your current content management system?
Folksonomy? Taxonomy? Hybrid?
Discussion:
When your image opened up did it show you other tags that had been added to the image already? Was it just the image and your tags? Was it just the image with the curatorial label? Or was it the image, curatorial label, other assigned tags, and your new tags being added to it?
From a curator's point of view, should the site allow inaccurate or incomplete tags?
Question of authority: Who has right to edit, remove or "correct" a tag - should it be corrected?
Democratization of art and culture
Controlled vocabulary vs. stream of consciousness or individual vocabulary
Discuss pro an con of the issues: Control of information - getting it right, responsibility to public, mob mentality vs. public response
Dewey decimal system is mathematical, logical and numeric where as tagging is visual, fluid and mobile
Additional Resources and Other Tagging Implementations
*FaceTag This is another research project, similar to Steve, but experimenting with the merging of folksonomies with taxonomies. From the website: "It aims to show how the flat keywords space of user-generated tags can be effectively mixed with a richer faceted classification scheme to improve the system information architecture." This webpage only talks about the research project. It does not allow you to work with a prototype of the tool like Steve.
*Google Image Labeler a fun way to collaboratively tag images while playing a game. Its
mechanism also addresses some problems raised in the readings such as poor or repetitive tags.
*Tagalag
*Odeo-a place for tagging podcasts and other media
*Librarything-tag your own collection, meet others with similar readings taste, and more
*Amazon
*TagTagger: tagging of tags
*Surf the News.com-an example of tagging done by "experts", in this case journalists
*NewsCloud-takes all the RSS feeds from the WashingtonPost.com and creates tag clouds
*ZoomClouds-an application designed for people to put on their own websties to create tag clouds
Evaluation
How do we feel it went?
Given that we were the first team to present we did not have a basis of comparison to anyone else, but we were organized, had a structure in mind, and had a list of points that we wanted to explore. We tried to keep the focus on the arts community as a knowledge community that uses this type of media, which proved successful as a way of narrowing our scope, but it was not necessarily and easy knowledge community for everyone in the class to become, since some had little experience with it. This will be a challenge for all groups. We tried to bring them into this community by making it an interactive experience that we all shared to make them comfortable with the community and be a part of it during the class discussions. However, some were more focused on critiquing the media itself rather than the learning outcomes of the media for the community. Class discussion was fluid and participation was great. It was clear that most people had done the homework and that the readings were relevant to the discussions we hoped to have in class.
What worked?
Getting people to understand that social tagging has multiple applications beyond the standard application of a word to an image, and could be a three-dimensional experience, was successful and added to discussion.
Using our implementation page on the wiki as a way of framing our agenda for the class, helped us keep focus and let the class know where we were planning on taking it.
Focusing on one particular knowledge community allowed us to maintain and appropriate scope for a two and a half hour class.
Use of a cartoon and scenarios helped bring the knowledge community into the classroom, as well as explaining some of the issues this knowledge community encounters.
We utilized our resources well, we were organized for time and structure.
What did not work?
There was a challenge for some to put themselves in the mindset of the knowledge community we were exploring.
The downside to using Steve and Murmur is that we could not visibly see the the feedback from each person's experiences and instead had to go around the room. If we had used a "standard" social tagging tool, we could have seen how a cloud formed from the tags applied by people in this particular class to better illustrate the effects of group tagging.
It would have been nice to see how clouds form just above the class to see what was the most popular answer, even if it was not the most accurate.
What are some ideas that would have been cool if we had thought about them beforehand?
It would have been interesting to know what social tagging sites people in class usually use and then use that as a way for them to compare with the Steve and Murmur project. How did these projects change their perceptions of social tagging?
Given more time it would have been nice to have more discussion on the wiki prior to class about the Murmur experience
To define what social tagging is, or what this class thinks it is, it would have been helpful also to discuss what IT IS NOT.
