Week 6, Thing #14 TAGGING

Hmm, we just had a staff meeting agenda about TAGGING in the restrooms, aka GRAFFITI; interesting that same terminology is used to identify blogs. I was working with students today on SIRS, and noticed that one of their new Leading Issues topics, Election 2008, had a little box to the side with some TAGS floating about in no particular order. When I create a "pathway" handout on library resources for a research project, I always include "keywords for searching," but perhaps I should start calling them keywords/TAGS, and typing them helter-skelter about the page in different fonts rather than in a neat alphabetical list. Students need my list because they have all kinds of ways of thinking about what they are trying to find in the library which the library catalog doesn't understand - my list is a sort of glossary, turning their need for a "job," for example, into "vocational guidance." Here's what I notice about TAGS on Technorati, Flickr, and Del.icio.ous -- nouns, verbs, adverbs, place, names, slang ("Rant" seems to be a popular tag) -- anything goes. It's a kind of keyword free for all, but it seems to work! As a linguist, I know that language and language forms are created by people and constantly evolving, not dictated by a grammar book. This "blogosphere" provides a fascinating look at a new type of language form in the process, the TAG. I notice that the larger sites now have directories, putting blogs into categories, and many use visual icons to represent various types of blogs. I truly think the blogosphere needs some virtual librarians on board so that they don't have to reinvent the wheel, so to speak (note to self: add a metaphor tag to this blog!)