Enhancing Social Tagging with a Knowledge Organization System

The paper investigates the effect on indexing and retrieval when using only social tagging versus when using social tagging in combination with suggestions from a knowledge organization system. The specific context is that of tagging by Web document readers, using Dewey Decimal Classification, its captions, Relative Index Terms and Library of Congress Subject Headings mapped to the captions. The results showed the importance of knowledge organization system suggestions for both indexing and retrieval: to help produce ideas of tags to use, to make it easier to find focus for the tagging, as well as to ensure consistency and increase the number of access points in retrieval.