ConFigures

Tags, Personal Information Management, and Beyond

I tend to be more interested in topics that don’t fit neatly into one category: interdisciplinary, multi-faceted matters.  This is why I was so happy when I discovered tags (and social bookmarking, serendipitously) – a.k.a. “labels” in Gmail.   I like the way tagging helps me organize and recall information I’ve come across on the web.  No time need be spent deciding “which category is most applicable”.  Most of the 1600+ articles I’ve tagged into my links library have multiple tags to help me find them later (some put down all at once, some added/edited as my ways of organizing evolve), so multiple contexts and associations will work.  Using an online tagging tool lets me access my links library from any web-enabled computer … and easily share whichever links I choose with other people who may be interested, whenever they want to look at my library or follow my tags via feeds. 

I’m using Connotea because I like its feature set (including open source and data exportability, along with highly flexible RSS feeds of tags and tag combinations) and user base, but there are many tagging sites/services out there.  Because of the way they display my information at Connotea, it’s easy for me to discover how other users tag popular links I’ve already tagged, follow their activities, and find other articles, sites, and research angles.

Combining general-user tagging, auto-indexing, and metadata from experts would extend the flexibility, power, and longevity of information systems.  I’m looking forward to seeing that as more social software integrations come our way.