There’s been a lot of discussion in the Blogosphere talking up social tagging / social bookmarking / folksonomies. I’m deeply interested in this conversation, as I think that user-generated information organization (as opposed to author-generated or thirdparty-generated information organization) has a lot of power behind it. Take the buzz around del.icio.us and flickr as an example of this excitement.

Or is this all hype without any true foundation?

I don’t know what to think – yet. I am still reading and learning more.

But I think at great first start in learning more about this subject is this academic paper by Adam Mathes at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His conclusion, though, reads, “A folksonomy represents the simultaneously some of the best and worst in the organization of information.”

No wonder I’m having a tough time forming my own opinion. I’ll keep digging and thinking.