Mercun and Zumer's article touches on some subjects that I plan on bringing up in my paper, i.e. the belief by many within the library profession that "by not following technological innovations and the trends on the web, libraries will not be able to compete with services such as Amazon or Google and may lose their position as primary information providers". In other words, the theory goes that libraries must "copy" other Web 2.0 applications in order to remain relevant, and one of the ways to do this is to redesign and restructure the online catalog so that it can "bring convenience, trends and quality closer together" for the patrons.
One method of accomplishing this is to take advantage of the collaborative nature of the web by enticing patrons to contribute things like reviews, comments, and tags (the article calls this "[making] use of collective intelligence"); the authors argue that while traditional OPACs have "relied on the expertise of a small group of specialists" (i.e. catalogers), the next-generation catalogs should "take advantage of [patrons'] contributions" so that they can "become better and [have their] value enhanced."
Now, while the implemenation of social tagging and user-generated reviews into the library OPAC can certainly be helpful, the contributions of these "specialists" shouldn't be so easily dismissed (and I'm not just saying that for job security!); as I've previously mentioned, things like social tagging (which are generated by the patrons) and controlled vocabularies (which are generated by the "specialists") can work in tandem to produce the optimum search results for those seeking information.
Another problem with this strategy - and I again explore the subject in my paper - is that people are assuming that patrons are even willing to participate in their libraries in this way ... The article points out that "the problem with collective intelligence is that it is achieved only when a critical mass of participation is reached"; in other words, a lot of people have to contribute in order for the system to be useful. And yet, the authors admit that (at least at the time the article was published) "social features have added only little value to the library catalogue." In fact, they rightfully point out that libraries are "late-comers" in the area of user-generated content (patrons are already contributing content to sites like Amazon and Flickr and LibraryThing, why would they bother adding the library catalog to the list?), and that patrons have no real motivation to actively participate in such endeavors.
The bottom line is that if patrons aren't willing to contribute tags or reviews to the library catalog, then the very idea of a "social cataloging community" becomes meangingless ... If no one is providing content (other than the "specialists"), then patrons will not be motivated to participate, and the "next-generation catalog" will be ignored regardless.
Also, not to rehash old gripes, but I found that the authors used the same rhetoric in this article about "Web 2.0" that I just personally find to be very irksome ... In particular, they describe Web 2.0 as "a place of collaboration and participation where users no longer only receive but also create and share content"; the use of the phrase "no longer" implies that "Web 1.0" users could not create and share content, which is simply not true, they just did it on a smaller scale (back in the day people could "create" personal homepages and "share" information via message boards and newsgroups, it's certainly easier nowadays but the principles of participation and user-created content were still very much in place back then).
It doesn't stop there, though, as they go on to describe the "Web 2.0 trend" as "the collaboration of users in the creation of content on the web" ... which, once again, can just as easily be used to describe what "Web 1.0 did as well! In fact, that's been the whole concept behind the explosion of the "World Wide Web" since the '90s: the ability for everyday people to create content and share it with people around the world.
Seriously, were the people spouting this stuff just not paying attention back then?!
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