LibraryThing is going to release a new “tagmash” feature soon, creating pages—not searches—combining tags.

So, “Greek” and “history.” This can be better than the lesser pile of things tagged “greek history,” and really comes into its own with something like “france + wwii + memoirs” or “japan + love - fiction.” I haven’t “opened” it yet, however, because I wanted to add two things (1) weighting of factors, and (2) adding subjects and pieces of subjects too—”france + wwii + subject:congresses” or “subject:Nervous system–Wounds and injuries + tag:mountaineering.” The system naturally computes “relatedness” to “single” subjects, tags and to other tagmashes.

The goal is to create something between the fluidity of the tag and the fixity of the subject—a fixed criterion for a fluid list—a fluid LCSH, a dynamic playlist, Listmania will legs!

Still thinking it through…

I hope that the rhetorical point about ILS degrees doesn’t overshadow the conclusion that cataloging the internet is a mismatch in scale — it will never be as organized as a library.

So we make compromises. One compromised attempt at a controlled tag vocabulary is Del.icio.us’s suggested tags feature. I have found myself changing my tag vocabulary to better match their suggestions.

That said, I’m in your ballpark - I like tagging things whatever I want - but in the end that doesn’t always help others find information in my collections.

Computers can do interesting things with large groups of tags. Clustering, for example. That gives an interesting view of a information space. The ability to pivot from a tag to a tagger to their other tags is also a useful navigation tool. There is no training required to tag things in your own personal information sphere.

One benefit of thesauri is that there is an hierarchical structure. Did something find too much, just get more specific. A search find too little use a brader term. They are all there to easily choose.