Free Association: Social Tagging in Online Collections

Visual Resources Association 26th Annual Conference, San Diego, California, March 12, 2008

Organizers: Meghan Musolff, University of Michigan and Adam Lauder, University of Windsor

Moderator: Meghan Musolff, University of Michigan

Through websites like flickr and del.icio.us, users have become empowered by the ability to personalize or “tag” data associated with images and websites. As social tagging becomes increasingly prevalent in the online environment, users will begin to expect this service in our image databases. What are the advantages of allowing users to take control and tag images? What type of review process is needed to weed out inappropriate terms? This panel will explore how social tagging projects function in various environments (museum, academic library, and visual resource collection) and examine how image tagging can enhance usability in online collections.

PennTags: Tagging in an Academic Library
Laurie Allen, PennTags Project, University of Pennsylvania

@toread and Cool: Tagging for Time, Task and Emotion
Margaret Kipp, Long Island University

Steve Project at the Met
Billy Kwan, STEVE project, Metropolitan Museum of Art 

Navigating in Flatland: mapping relations / making relationships
(presentation document)
Adam Lauder, University of Windsor