Assignment 8 – Metadata and Folksonomy

The reading from chapter 4, Badke apprises about metadata and how it simplifies our search. I agree that when I use Google search engine, I get information that is vast and is spread all over the place. Instead of losing in too much of the information, he showed how easy it is to focus while searching, to get only that information which is necessary, by using metadata (much more organized and simple arrangement of information). To convey his point, he used the example of the database of Library of Congress and its use by most of the libraries in the north. As far as the other readings are concerned, I enjoyed the article on “Flickr” and “Folksonomy”. Both articles talked about tagging and searching using keywords. I agree with the fact that, now a day, tagging is very common concept in social media and people with common interests (like photographing in case of flickr and picasaweb) come together and make these sites worth surfing. Flickr has its own advantages where you can find high resolution photodata, when you search using keyword tags and photos can be accessed by public but public access comes with its disadvantage that anybody can use the photos anyhow s/he wants.