I’m exploring Technorati again for this Thing. I have spent some time here in the past, but I always come away thinking I’m missing parts–I’m trying to fill in the gaps. One thing that I always forget to do is tag my posts, so I’m going to try to remember to do a better job at that.

The Discovery Exercise had us search for terms using various advanced features. I found that “school library learning 2.0” gets the results I wanted–can’t forget the quotations–and the Quick View is a very handy element!

Obviously, tagging is the element that makes it possible for the “social” part of web2.0 to take place. It’s the reason that we can find cool photos on flickr that are that certain shade of blue, how we can find others with similar interests–it’s how virtual community building is made easy and convenient. It’s very powerful, and since you can tag your work with as many tags as you want to, it is flexible too. And for the most part it works amazingly well. Tagging is perhaps the most powerful aspect of this new (to me and my fellow school library 2.0 learners) world.

However, the librarian in me (geeky, I know) also sees the limitations that come with such a non-standardized cataloging system. I found posts tagged with misspellings, with or without spaces, etc. These nonstandard tags (most of them mistakes) render that piece of work on the web invisible–that’s the fly in the ointment. Just a reminder for myself to tag carefully and try to think like the person that might be searching for my work so I use effective tags.