Purpose -The purpose of this article is to provide a quantitative analysis of the extent to which folksonomies replicate the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) to see if folksonomies would successfully complement cataloger-supplied subject headings in library catalogs. Design/methodology/approach -The paper compares social tags and LC subject headings for ten books from various library-related applications including next generation OPACs and LibraryThing by ranking tags and subject headings using scales modified from research by Golder and Huberman, Voorbij, and Kipp. Findings -Social tagging does indeed augment LCSH by providing additional access to resources. Research limitations/implications -Several of our applications lacked tags for the books we chose in our study. Tags are primarily taken from LibraryThing. Practical implications -A hybrid catalog combining both LCSH and a folksonomy would result in richer metadata and be stronger than the sum of its parts, giving patrons the best of both worlds in terms of access to materials. Originality/value -This paper supplies quantitative support for the use of folksonomies in a library's catalog. The data also supports many of the previous theories proposed in literature about folksonomies and social tagging.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to provide a quantitative analysis of the “messiness” of the social tags in folksonomies to see how useful they might be for general search and retrieval in library catalogs.Design/methodology/approachThe study harvested tags for ten books from LibraryThing measuring characteristics which would hinder search and retrieval in library catalogs.FindingsBecause there are no rules governing the way people tag, folksonomies suffer from a certain degree of messiness and inconsistency. More than a third of this messiness is in the form of tag variations followed by tags containing non‐alphabetic characters. The other types of messiness measured were less significant, making tag variations the most prominent hindrance to search and retrieval.Originality/valueThe paper supplies quantitative support for giving users guidance for creating tags in a library catalog. However, libraries should remember that part of the attraction of social tagging is its open and self‐created environment and that too many rules and regulations may discourage participation.

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The authors conducted a survey on outsourcing of cataloging in academic libraries in order to determine the extent of outsourcing being done in academic libraries and the overall success of such projects. The survey instrument included questions about factors that might affect the decision to outsource, what reasons libraries had for outsourcing or not outsourcing, what was being outsourced, and how vendors were chosen. Libraries were also asked to evaluate the success of outsourcing projects. The results show that outsourcing of cataloging is not a strong trend in academic libraries, but that libraries which outsourced were generally pleased with results. There also seems to be a correlation between size of collection and number of new titles cataloged annually and the decision to outsource.utsourcing has been a hot topic in cataloging circles in the last decade, especially since the Wright State University library made its controversial decision to outsource all of its cataloging operations to OCLC TechPro in 1993. This sparked many heated discussions regarding the value and quality of outsourced cataloging, as well as many articles describing outsourced projects. However, no one has determined the extent to which academic libraries actually outsource cataloging or the overall success of these endeavors. Therefore, we decided it would be both interesting and appropriate to conduct a survey to address these issues. Claire-Lise Benaud and Sever Bordeianu of the University of New Mexico are also researching outsourcing in academic libraries and include several general questions on outsourcing of cataloging in their recent survey. Because our survey focuses on cataloging in greater detail and includes an assessment of the results of outsourcing projects, our results should complement, rather than duplicate, their effort. Literature ReviewThe literature review mainly covers the literature published in the 1990's, since li�le was published on outsourcing in the 1980's (a finding borne out by the comprehensive literature review on outsourcing