[bksvol-discuss] Re: Categories

  • From: Julia <julia.kulak@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Tue, 09 Oct 2012 15:59:09 -0400

Hi everyone.
I haven't used tags very much, but I still like the idea of having different categories to start out with. I like to be able to browse through them, without needing to type a specific book and generate a list of tags.
I guess I should go to openlibrary and see how they do things. Julia
On 09/10/2012 3:52 PM, Roger Loran Bailey wrote:
Madeleine, I just read the summary of the phone conference and I noted the last item about my having brought up the subject of categories. I would appreciate it if you would pass on my suggestions that I will make here. I have discussed this before, but it has been a long time and I would like to discuss it again. The problem with the categories is that most people think that there are not enough or that we need subcategories. Personally, I am a big advocate of splitting the science fiction and fantasy categories into both a science fiction category and a fantasy category. However, if you do that then there are even more subcategories that those categories could be split into and I am sure that all the other categories could be split too. Obviously, if all the splits that can be made are made then it could become rather unwieldy. There is a solution though. Many web sites have user created tags. You can find this at Amazon, Paperback Swap and other sites. The site that I have in mind, though, as a model is Open Library. At Open Library anyone who comes along can add a tag to the catalog entry of any book. These tags can be a category or a subcategory or a character name or the names of places mentioned in the book or the time frame the book covers or virtually anything else. Once those tags are added they are searchable. That is, when you are in the catalog entry for any book you can click one of those tags and you will be taken to a list of all books that have also been given that tag. Many of those tags have been also generated by importing subjects from library catalogs. Whenever you do a search on the site, whether you are searching by title, author or tag there will be a list of all tags that have been applied to the books that come up in your results and that list will be found at the bottom of the results page. Each of those tags will have a number associated with it telling you how many titles in your search results have that tag and you may refine your search to include books that match the search terms you have used and the tag in question by just clicking the tag. You might think that if you let just anyone add tags there would be some vandalism, but if anyone can add a tag then anyone who comes along can also remove an inappropriate tag too. Besides, I have never seen any deliberate vandalism in Open Library that I would want to remove. I have seen some mistakes that I have corrected, but no deliberate vandalism. When I first proposed this kind of system for Bookshare I was thinking that it might supplement the current category structure rather than replace it, but I will note that it is the only category structure that Open Library has and I think it would work as the only category structure for Bookshare too. I would like to urge anyone who is in charge of these matters at Bookshare to visit OpenLibrary.org and look at the tagging system for category structure and consider it.
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