I was searching the Old Colony Library Network catalog today and for the first time I kind of “got” the cloud display. It’s not actually supposed to work like facets, it’s sort of the opposite of facets. Facets help you narrow your search, and the tag cloud expands it.
Then I experimented with other libraries that use tag clouds. The same searches bring up different word clouds in each library. Sometimes the associations seem weird but hey, if those words are linked in your catalog, why not suggest them to the user?
I also see where tag clouds can compensate for the shortcomings of topic facets (“Refine”), which seem to be based on LC subjects. The tag clouds allow you to bust out of the LC subject framework. It’s like if someone comes to the library reference desk and asks for something using an incorrect or unfamiliar term–the tag cloud tries to imagine what possible relationship that term might have to something that’s actually in the library.
Remember the mean librarian in
Sophie’s Choice who humiliates Sophie and sends her away for asking for poetry books by “Emil Dickens”? Well, with a tag cloud, Sophie might have been able to find it. (Of course then she never would have met Nathan… or Stingo…but on the other hand, that might have worked out better for her in the long run…)
Maybe that explains why so many public libraries are choosing to display tag clouds?
And maybe when people are researching interdisciplinary topics, the tag cloud might help expand their vocabulary into unfamiliar areas?
I know it is popular to make fun of tag clouds, and I have been guilty of that myself. But they are fun, once you let go of the notion that they are supposed to help you find a particular item, and instead allow yourself to be inspired to use the web catalog as a way of wandering through the collections.
That’s what happened to me with the Old Colony Library. Try it! (navigator.ocln.org)
Karen Merguerian