Things #11

I have been looking for a cataloging system for my personal library and I think I have found it. Spider's catalog shows some of the many things of iterests I have. While reading tagging article linked to LibraryThing, I was struck by the thought that this is like adding a new building at a college campus and waiting for the paths to appear before sidewalks are added. It get's messy in the rain before the concrete is poured, but they do run the way the users want them. It seems that this concept is like the free text/thesaurus discussions. The tags will be messy for a while, but will soon be a consensus. I thought the author's understanding and communication of the subtile, perhaps even emotional distinctions of synonyms, was a well thought-out and reasoned argument. The tag approach allows the various groups to be formed free from top down thinking.