Library clips

fac.etio.us groups tags into facets, so you can find a bookmark via multiple paths, naturally you can do this sort of thing with tagging as you can apply multiple tags to the one bookmark, but this system divides batches of tags into facets…it’s the next best thing to a prefix for tags.

So now instead of browsing through one long list of tags, a tag set is divided into facets to give you more contextual browsing

…but this system doesn’t seem anything new, because if you wanted you could use tag bundles to make facets in your del.icio.us account…although what this system does is aggregate many accounts, and groups tags into facets.

Now I wonder how the tags are grouped into facets, is this done by a computer or is it a person placing tags in groups (facets)…ohhh no controlling the browsing of a folksonomy, this was bound to happen as our tag sets grow wildly…actually I see it more as an offer to browse another way (more contextually).

This process could be automated into system designed facets quite easily for a tool like del.icio.us…for each bookmark, you could also choose from a drop down menu to describe the document type as CiteULike does, eg, journal article, conference, thesis, etc…this would be like an automated facet for the bookmark in general.

This does create more work for the user, but at least the system is still a pure folksonomy…also users are selecting from the facet list, who decides the facet list…is there a facet suggestion list?

I like this idea as the tags people apply are generally more “subject/topic based”, so to separate these from other functional or descriptive tags we could choose from various drop-down menu’s to apply the other types of tags…this leaves the tag list to be subject/topic based.

So if I bookmark a page in del.icio.us on “sustainability” I can give it the tag “sustainability” and “sustainabledevelopment”, etc…but at the same time for a little extra work I can also select some options from 4 or 5 drop-down menu’s, this isn’t too much thinking, you just have to select from the options.

So, similar to the CiteULike approach, there could be the following fields (just fill in what you need to):

Automated facets by the system

DOCTYPE
doc
xls
html
xml
pdf
ppt
etc…

DOMAIN
gov
org
com
edu
etc…

DATE

USER/CONTRIBUTOR

For the bookmark

FORMAT (choose one or none from the following)
Journal article
White paper
Conference
Blog post
Website
Product
Type in your own
etc…

ACTION
to read
to blog
need access
to buy
to send
Type in your own
etc…

GEO
various countries…

ORG
various organisations…

Example

So if I have a pdf of a white paper on energy efficiency (sustainable practice) from a firm in Australia, and I want to blog about it, here is the tagging process.

USER-DEFINED TAGS (subject tags)
- energy
- sustainabledevelopent
- sustainability

AUTOMATED SYSTEM TAGS FOR THE BOOKMARK
- pdf
- org
- 20/09/05
- johnt

USER-SELECTED BOOKMARK FIELDS (drop-down menu) FOR NON-SUBJECT TAGS
- White paper
- to blog
- Australia
- Organisation name

What about subject facets?

The tags applied by the user, as per usual, are now considered the “subject tags” (eg. sustainability, etc.)…but then how do we make facets out of these?
eg. genre, technology, attribute, etc…
…a drop down menu for a subject facet just couldn’t cover the scope, although you could give a choice, and a space to type your own.
When thinking of applying a subject facet to your tag, it would be like thinking of which broad category/discipline this tag would come under…in some circumstances the facet name could be the same as your tag name, eg. politics.

Then you could browse del.icio.us by these facets…or at least you could make up these facets for your own account (that means you would have to customise the fields in your bookmarklet)

For more see:
Siderean - Trees, tags and facets
Facets + Tags

Another way of having automated tag bundles is having a pre-fix for a tag (tag for the tag)…the other day I posted about doing this manually in del.icio.us..
Wists has this feature (a form of meta-tagging, they call themes)…in this sense your tag bundles or facets could automatically be created by the pre-fix heading, although I also the like the option to also make your own weird and wonderful tag bundles.

see more…

[ADDED 23/09/05: Furl lets you check the boxes read or unread at the time of bookmarking…so later on you can sort your archive by read or unread.
This has an added handiness, as at the time of bookmarking you may not have read the webpage you are bookmarking, so you can’t really fill in the comments/description field…later on once you have read the webpage, you can check it as “read” and also add a comment.]

[ADDED 3/10/05: Faceted Folksonomy]