The future of authority

While preservation and authority are important ideals for the library/archives/museum environment to uphold, the provision of access cannot be forgotten.  Flickr Commons offers institutions with an avenue to increase their collections accessibility as well as accessibility’s sibling, discoverability.  While some catalogers still cringe at the term “uncontrolled vocabulary,” the benefits of non-traditional methods of description like “tagging” are becoming hard to ignore.  This blog will examine how “tagging” can benefit both users and librarians.

            Who stands to gain more with Flickr Commons?  The clear winner is the user.  Flickr’s user interface offers the ability to both tag and comment.  Tags allow greater searchability while discussions in the comment section can lead to better understanding of the photographs, both from a content-based and a context-based perspective.  The thing that gives “tagging” superiority over LCSH, AAT, or other controlled vocabularies is the fact that it both for users and by users.  User-generated description means user-based access; because the terms used in “tagging” have come from those interested in the materials, there is a greater chance that a similar user to the tagger will find the image based on the tag, even if the tag is inaccurate.  The issue of “non-specialist” researchers was addressed in the Library of Congress’ report, “For the Common Good: The Library of Congress Flickr Pilot Project”:

We might also consider doing something with tags that other Flickr members have asked to have removed as inaccurate, such as “Dirigibles” and “Zeppelins” on a photo of a barrage balloon.  Because these terms could still be useful as entry vocabulary for non-specialists, it might be useful to qualify misused terms, e.g., “Dirigible (similar)” or “Dirigible (related to).” (25)

Though the terms “zeppelin” and “dirigible” may be inaccurate, users without that knowledge might never have found the proper picture simply because they did not know the proper term to search for.  Why should the users be punished for not having a vocabulary keyed to the intricacies of aeronautical terminology?

            Let us continue with this last example, but consider it from the cataloger’s end.  “Controlled vocabularies” do not just save the punishment for users, but also for the catalogers that prepare controlled descriptions.  Imagine the cataloger who sees a picture of what he or she believes to be a dirigible, makes a note, and continues.  While on lunch break, the cataloger feels a slight pain emanating from the abdomen.  No, it is not heartburn, but worse: cataloger’s guilt.  After a quick google search, it is discovered that it wasn’t a dirigible.  The cataloger rushes back and changes the record, removing the inaccuracy.  The new record, though accurate, has lost both the cataloger’s time as well as that of some users.  In the world of “tagging,” this issue would have cleaned itself up as someone would have eventually corrected the inaccuracy.  The original entry, though inaccurate, was closer to the cataloger’s instinctive vocabulary and therefore might have been closer to some user’s instinctive vocabulary as well.

Using controlled vocabularies can be very helpful to catalogers, preventing them from having to reinvent the wheel.  It has been said that the greatest thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from.  There are certainly enough controlled vocabularies to handle almost any subject, genre-form, geographical location or whatever else needs to be described by metadata, but holding any of these various cataloging languages up as “the standard” ignores the fact that all of them are a derivative of some common language.  Theoretically, language itself is the original “controlled vocabulary,” and although language has historically been more organic, it still is something that all taggers will have in common.  Will all taggers have the same level of vocabulary? No, but then again, neither will the catalogers.

Although there are plenty of good arguments for using standards, when it comes to description and user access, it is time for us to admit that these standards may be losing some of their effectiveness.  While it is important for catalogers to be aware of the many controlled vocabularies at their disposal, it is illogical to expect that our users take the time to learn these lexicons when Web 2.0 tools are making them increasingly irrelevant.  Perhaps the key word in the last sentence is “disposal.”  The future authority of catalogers may mean handing over the controls to the people who benefit from description the most: the users.