Saturday, July 25, 2009

Thing 13

I looked up "TLA Conference 2009" on Flickr, and learned to my surprise that there was a tornado evacuation! It must have happened the day before I arrived, but I never heard anything about it.

After studying this Thing, I've decided I'm a fan of tagging. I work in an elementary school, and sometimes it's difficult for children to find books without the correct subject headings - and I can occasionally say the same for myself. I can understand that subject headings are far more organized, and we should keep them for cataloging. However, it occurred to me that strict headings made far more sense back in the days of paper and fiche cataloging, when tagging would have been completely unmanageable. Like most everything else in the library world, this has changed and this may be one more area in which we need to let the old ways relax a little. Patrons are so accustomed to Google and other search engines that they become frustrated when the subject headings in their minds don't match those in the OPAC. I'm going to look up other blogs for this Thing and see what my fellow librarians are saying. Thanks for a thought-provoking assignment.

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