La memoria dei tag

Abstract

For about twenty years, we witness a transformation of indexing systems that goes by the name of social tagging or folksonomy. The purpose of this article is not to give instructions on the most correct way of labeling library resources. Rather, the purpose is to consider social tagging from a more abstract standpoint, i.e. as a way in which society structures its social memory. Three core issues are taken into consideration: 1) the function performed by tagging; 2) the “feedback cycle” which is triggered by the interplay between users and the machine; 3) eventually, tags do not inform about the contents of library resources, rather they inform about what users think the contents of library resources are.