info NeoGnostic: OPACi - tagging OPACs

: Name: Chris Armstrong; Location: Aberystwyth, Wales, United Kingdom

I am the owner and managing director of Information Automation Limited (IAL), a company that specialises in research, consultancy and training for the information profession. We are particularly interested in all forms of electronic information resources (e-journals, e-books, etc) and I teach a course in electronic publishing at the Department of Information Studies in Aberystwyth. Drilling down still further(!), my interests centre on the quality and evaluation of electronic information, and in the thinking that underpins activities in library and information science.

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Sunday, March 12, 2006

OPACi - tagging OPACs

At the beginning of February I wrote about the idea of allowing users to tag entries in OPACs. The word is spreading! The ACRL Blog reports that the University of Pennsylvania Library has created a system that allows:

They created their tagging system a while back and, if you look at the dates under the tags, it is heavily used. With the addition of this new feature
+ Students can rely on their trust networks to locate materials that they wouldn't otherwise see.
+ Professors can assign books and tag each one with the course number.
+ Librarians can easily create online subject oriented reading lists.

How exciting that a library is helping to make the catalog a two way street.

I wonder which will be the first UK library to experiment in this way.

>>Technorati tags: OPAC; tagging