The scenario: if you stop by Pratt Manhattan Library between the hours of 4pm and 8pm on any given evening you will find the 4th aisle filled with students browsing the shelves or slumped on the floor with an eclectic pile of Art & Design books.
The problem: Art & Design Students cannot find specific images and ideas in books using traditional library cataloging and classification. We wanted to help them.
Why tags: tags allow design students to tag their books with the idea or image they are looking for, creating a trail through the books that can lead other students down the same path. Incorporating tags makes searching specific: where once students searched for books now they search for the metadata.
Why LibraryThing: this online service allows people to catalog their books. You can access the catalog from anywhere—even on your mobile phone. Because everyone catalogs together, LibraryThing also connects people with the same books, comes up with suggestions for what to read next, and creates a community of ideas out of a book. Social data makes it easier to find what you are looking for.
We needed to test our theory, so we decided to employ user tagging on the Art & Design students in the Communication Design Program at Pratt Institute.
