Thing 13: Tagging

Being a cataloger, for me open tagging makes little sense. We were taught in library school that in order to help people sucessful in finding meterial, we needed to have some sort of controlled vocabulary!

I think the fact that librarians often have standardized on fairly esoteric terms. How many people do you know who talk about cookery books? And from an earlier time, do you know who Eric Blair is? This from the time when librarians insisted on not using popular pseudonyms or pennames.

Addendum

Also, this probably stemps from having to clean up a library database where these was no controlled vocabulary when I first came here. It took hours and hours and hours.

Librarians need to become more proactive in using contemporary vocabulary rather than sticking to the old traditions.