Review of "Social Tagging and the Enterprise: Does Tagging Work at Work?"

"Social Tagging and the Enterprise: Does Tagging Work at Work?"

In this article, the author examined if social tagging could exist in the workplace. Stephanie Lemieux, the author, makes the focus of the article deal with two main points: findability and people. I believe both points can become a problem, as evidenced in Lemieux’s article. The author evaluated social tagging platforms in general to determine that tagging enables findability. Also, people can personalize their tags, meaning there are no rules in what people tag or how they tag it, adding a human element to finding information. This was later brought up as perhaps a hindrance if social tagging was done in the workplace. Lemieux brings up the point that too much social tagging can in fact separate similar materials. Tags spelled wrong, marked using a synonym, or adding a “s” to a term, could likely skew groupings of similar content.

The author believes that tagging should accompany, but not overpower, workplace materials to add another aspect to documents. Lemieux introduces “The Content Continuum” which is essentially what can be done using social tagging and what cannot in the workplace.

Due to increased findability using tags, argues the author, people may be able to cut down on wasted time because content of interest is already sifted through for them. Information professionals would also not be relied upon as much to filter content if employees could do it themselves. As a whole, I believe Lemieux’s article relates the importance of knowing what to tag, and keeping personal and workplace content separate in terms of social tagging.