Tag! You

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Tag! Youre ItSocial Bookmarking at MLibrary

• Ken Varnum
• Web Systems Manager
• University of Michigan Library
• Access 2008
• 2 October 2008

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What Is MTagger?

• Library-Based Tagging Tool
• delicious
• fURL
• Social networking tools (Flickr, Facebook, etc.)
• Way to organize academic bookmarks
• Always accessible
• Shared with others
• Build a common pool of knowledge

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What is a Tag?

• A label that you assign to a web page
• Think of it as a filing system
• One web page can be in many of your folders
• One web page can be in many peoples folders
• Has meaning to you
• Lets you find a group of like things again
• Word or phrase

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What MTagger Does

• Allows users to assign keywords to library
  stuff on our site
• Catalog
• Web Pages
• Digital Images
• Library publications
• Or anything, anywhere (via bookmarklet)
• Search, display, retrieve bookmarks

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What Is Different?

• Collections
• MLibrary (library web pages)
• Mirlyn (library catalog)
• Digital Images
• Scholarly Publishing
• Everything Else
• Integration with Site

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Three Ways to Tag Navigation
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Three Ways to Tag Tag Cloud
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Three Ways to Tag Bookmarklet
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Where People Tag
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Tagging Something
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Then What?

• Your tags are available in MTagger

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Item Listing
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How MTagger Is Used

• Basic Stats (as of 9/27)
• 823 users
• 2329 tags (1957 unique)
• 1849 items (URLs)
• Not as broadly / deeply as wed like
• Tags are generally tagger-centric
• Exception Librarians tag differently

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Everyones Tags
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User Demographics
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What Gets Tagged
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Finding New Stuff
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MTagger RSS Feeds

• Every search
• Specific person
• Tags
• Individual tags used by a particular person

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Feed for Persons Items
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Feed for a Tag
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Feed for a Persons Specific Tag
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Programmers API

• MTagger Data Available in
• RSS
• Styled HTML
• JSON
• Detailslib.umich.edu/mtagger/mtaggerAPI.txt

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Resource Guides
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Managing Tags
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Issues and Challenges (1)

• Tagging tied to U-M uniqname
• Accountability public face
• Pluses and minuses

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Issues and Challenges (2)

• Balance of anonymity and sharing
• MTagging is a public act
• Offers anonymity, not privacy
• Most feedback on this issue from a single source

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Issues and Challenges (3)

• Getting noticed by users
• Fliers, handouts, cards
• Various publicity tools
• Integration into library BI
• Word of mouth

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Where Next?

• Usability study Summer 2007
• Improvements planned for
• Tag cloud display on pages
• Tag cloud display in MTagger
• Handling of collections
• Workflow
• Integration into VuFind beta
• Expansion into HathiTrust (née MBooks)

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Development Environment

• Cake PHP
• MySQL
• JavaScript on web pages (Mirlyn, Image
  Collection, Scholarly Publishing) to build a
  valid permalink
• Intent to make version 2 open source (spring 2009)

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Links

• MTagger
• http//lib.umich.edu/mtagger
• MTagger Updates
• http//mblog.lib.umich.edu/blt/archives/mtagger/
• Ken Varnum
• Email varnum_at_umich.edu
• Blog http//www.rss4lib.com/