Distributed authority control in the age of web 2.0:
The case of LibraryThing
Amanda WatsonQuestioning Authority conference
March 29, 2008
http://www.librarything.com
Part of the LibraryThing tag cloud
Combining and separating works
Combined tags: “19th century”
Detail: author page for Mark Twain, showing combined name variants
Common Knowledge page for The Hobbit
Expert vs. crowd
Images:
“Authority of Law” sculpture by James Earle Fraser, U.S. Supreme Court (photo credit: D. B. King)
Rally in Union Square, early 1910s (Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Collection)
LC subject search for “Cookery, Italian”
Subject headings and tags in action
Disambiguation: William Gibson
Popular & unpopular authors
J. R. R. Tolkien Barnabe Barnes
LibraryThing for Libraries (Claremont Colleges)
Title confusion in Web of Science
Thank you!
Amanda Watson (amanda . watson @ gmail . com)