[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Feature inquiry

[Deanna Frazee]

> And while you're asking, what about tagging? I think it's fair to say
that
> Web 2.0 features are expected these days--and not just by the younger
> users. We need to keep library user interfaces more up-to-date more
> quickly than has been the case in the past. E.g., most database
vendors
> had citation export features LONG before we got it into the old OPACs.

I partially agree with Stuart, yet I think tagging is highly over-rated
since it allows for so much randomness as to be useless in many cases.
In particular, I think we give up too much when we bow to having
uncontrolled headings.  For example, in a recent search to replace my
vacuum cleaner, I discovered a product on Amazon.com with the following
tags:  vacuum, vacuums, vacuum cleaner, vacuum cleaners, great and a
variety of misspellings of "vacuum".

Starting with the obvious "great" is not a useful tag unless you are
putting it on your own book list to remind you which books were most
enjoyable.  Beyond that, we have a situation that begs for a nice spell
checker and suggestions for what the person really meant.

Yes, the ability to tag should be there.  But make it a feature that can
be turned off by those of us who do not want it.  

Deanna Frazee
Killeen City Library System