LibraryTechtonics

There’s been some buzz about my people tagging post that I didn’t expect, but will delightfully accept. I think sometimes librarians are so caught up on the information and data aspects of tagging that they sometimes miss out on the human aspect, so I’m glad that the post is making the rounds.

However, the one concern I have is that the post was confusing, so much so that the excellent barker for the most recent Carnival of Infosciences (one of the most fabulous phenoms to come out of the library blog realm), one Mister Mark Lindner, wrote “I’m not even sure what Andrea is talking about at points,” and Greg over at Open Stacks backed him up with a warranted giggle.

Funny thing about that post: it was the collected condensation of a 3-hour conversation between my husband and I (two total geeks with liberal arts educations, one of whom is a librarian), plus interesting recent reading I’d done on the non-metadata aspects of tagging, and my own efforts to process how to make it accessible to my profession, tossed in my brain and shaken really hard. Most of it makes sense to me as food for thought and discussion, but looking back, I think perhaps I should have divided it into several bite-sized posts for easier digestion. Unfortunatley (or fortunately, depending on how you see your glass), it all came out at once.

I’m a librarian with a hypertext mental process who is open to cordial intellectual dialog. When in doubt, or just totally confused, send me email (and/or send me your IM handle, and we can chat). Ask me questions. Challenge my ideas. Make opposite arguments. Add your own support comments. Tell me what you don’t get. Even if I don’t write a whole email back, I’ll post what I think is interesting and/or might help other people understand (names can be witheld to protect the innocent, never fear, simply ask). Alternately, post something about it on your blog. If it links to me, i’ll find it, and if not, email me and let me know it exists.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Tags: technology