As we reflect on these rules, the history behind them and the reasons for them, we have discussed how our current systems may not be well suited to users’ needs or modes of thinking.  This is worthwhile to investigate from a practical standpoint, but the implied philosophy here also interests me.  As it stands now, it seems that the practice of traditional cataloging affirms the philosophy that there is an underlying order and structure to knowledge and information—in opposition to the current “free-form” fad of folksonomies/tagging/etc.  In fact, it reminds me of the debate forever circulating in my mathematics department: is mathematics created or discovered?  Is there universal order independent of our minds, or does it derive from our minds?  Do we create the order, or simply create the tools that allow us to see patterns and access this underlying order in a frame of reference we understand?  If there is something real about this order, does it have to be delineated or imposed by strict rules?  Shouldn’t it arise naturally from typical actions of all who organize information?  These are really different philosophies: traditional taxonomies seek the objective while folksonomies value the subjective and relativistic.  (And would those looking at this through the lens of logical positivism say it doesn’t matter because even if we knew for certain, that knowledge wouldn’t change the way we operate?)  Should we just put all the semantics aside and focus instead on how we might get both systems to work together in order to improve our systems for our users?  My thoughts are not clear yet; these are just some interesting ideas to ponder, and something I definitely would like to read more about.  I’m sure papers have been published on these topics.

 

EDIT (5/8/08): Interesting papers:

http://www.dlib.org/dlib/november06/peterson/11peterson.html 
(Beneath the Metadata: Some Philosophical Problems with Folksonomy, by Elaine Peterson)

http://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/~mbolin/e-peterson3.pdf 
(Parallel Systems: The Coexistence of Subject Cataloging and Folksonomy, by Elaine Peterson)

And interesting blog entries:

http://tinyurl.com/4u7z3a

http://tinyurl.com/46jy28