The Memory of Tags

In the last twenty years, indexing systems have undergone a profound transformation that has been dubbed social tagging or folksonomy. The aim of this article is not to furnish instructions about the best way to tag library resources. Instead, the aim here is to consider the activity of tagging from a more abstract standpoint, that is, from the social memory viewpoint. As a first priority, therefore, this article deals with the function performed by tagging, i.e. how social access to information is organised. After a brief discussion of social memory, three core issued are taken into consideration: first, the function performed by tagging; second, the feedback cycle which is triggered by the interplay of users and the machine; third, tags do not inform about the contents of library resources, they inform about what users think the contents of library resources are. The last question to be tackled by this article is whether any correlation with the evolution of social memory can be discerned in the procedures of tagging and, if so, what does the evolutionary advantage of the activity of social tagging comprise.