Abstract
This chapter examines the Archive of Our Own (AO3) tagging system and backend design to determine how its successful elements can be implemented in a secondary school library setting. Specifically, it looks at social tagging on the platform to evaluate how effective a collaborative tag-based search system could be as a supplement to a traditional school library catalog. The author conducted field research and created an online library tagging template for school use. Google Forms are also used to generate content for the platform, which is designed for both librarian and student user groups. This work was carried out throughout the 2019-2020 school year. The author found that community care, subject knowledge, and “tag wrangling” are the key elements of the AO3 that can potentially be leveraged in a secondary school library environment to promote student engagement and reading for pleasure.
TopIntroduction
In 1876, Melvil Dewey devised an elegant method for categorizing the world's books. The Dewey Decimal System divides books into 10 broad subject areas and several hundred sub-areas and then assigns each volume a precise number...But on the Internet, a new approach to categorization is emerging. Thomas Vander Wal, an information architect and Internet developer, has dubbed it folksonomy — a people's taxonomy. (Pink, 2005)
With the rise of the internet and more users accessing it, digital data has increased exponentially. The current online data excess requires a type of subject marking to encourage productivity in search; however, the volume of data is well past a size that could ever be managed by data experts. Folksonomy, or social tagging, is a way to deal with this issue. Non-experts endeavor to organize online data by means of tagging.
Tags are keywords added to content by users. They are generally descriptive, indicating the subject matter or location of content and even providing commentary. Tagging is both a form of information architecture and a means of personal information management, and tagging system considerations rest on “personal versus social uses, individual versus standard tags, freedom versus control, and amateur opinions versus those of experts” (Smith, 2008, p. 20). As a versatile and interpersonal method of categorization, it can be a helpful way of dealing with the ceaseless stream of online information. Free tagging allows users to create their own tags to describe their content rather than enforcing a rigid taxonomy of categories and terms created by the owners of the platform. Folksonomy, or social tagging, evolved from the “personal free tagging of information...for one's own retrieval” (Vander Wal, 2007). It is a collaborative classification system that develops as users tag content to make it easier for themselves or others to find (Pink, 2005). According to Smith, dependable tagging relies to a certain degree on controlled vocabularies, which connect different terms with the same definition via synonym rings (that link terms with the same definitions) and authority files (which do the same while prioritizing one as the preferred term). Systems can also blend controlled and free tagging by employing user-generated controlled vocabularies. An example of a platform that successfully utilizes social tagging is Archive of Our Own.
Archive of Our Own (AO3) is a fan-driven storytelling platform for transformative works, in which “some element of a canon work—the source text or event—is taken and incorporated into a new creative piece. The taken element can be the characters, world setting, plot, stories, still images, video clips, or something else from the source” (Firestone & Clark, 2018, p. 36). As of 2020, the Archive contains 5,622,000 works and supports 2,289,000 users across over 35,630 fandoms. One of AO3’s overall philosophical mandates is to be a home for works at risk of being taken down on other fan sites. The site is explicitly designed by and for fans: the homepage reads, “A fan-created, fan-run, nonprofit, noncommercial archive for transformative fan works, like fanfiction, fanart, fan videos, and podfic.” Archive of Our Own won the Hugo Award for Best Related Work in 2019, evidence of its eminence.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Fan Works: Stories, videos, art, and other forms of media created by fans of a particular franchise ( Star Trek , Harry Potter , etc.).
Filtered Search: A search tool that allows users to limit their results to the specifications that they give.
Folksonomy: A system, generated by users, of labeling and sorting content online, typically by means of tags.
Tags: A label, typically a keyword, given to a piece of online information to describe it and help users find it.
Vocabulary Control: A method of organizing content that uses predetermined terms or tags.
Tag Cloud: A visual representation of a website’s tags and their popularity; the bigger the tag is depicted, the more frequent its usage.
Social tagging: A system that allows users to label online content with tags to help organize it for themselves and others.
User-Generated Content: Tags, text, images, videos, etc. that have been uploaded by users rather than corporations.
User Experience (UX): All facets of a user's interaction with a website or product.