Tagging: Reviews of concepts in Knowledge Organization

This article examines tagging as knowledge organization. Tagging is a kind of indexing, a process of labelling and categorizing information made to support resource discovery for users. Social tagging generally means the practice whereby internet users generate keywords to describe, categorise or comment on digital content. The value of tagging comes when social tags within a collection are aggregated and shared through a folksonomy. This article examines definitions of tagging and folksonomy, and discusses the functions, advantages and disadvantages of tagging systems in relation to knowledge organization before discussing studies that have compared tagging and conventional library-based knowledge organization systems. Approaches to disciplining tagging practice are examined and tagger motivation discussed. Finally, the article outlines current research fronts.