I have now finished reading this splendid book by Patrick Lambe. It is one of those books that is really hard to take notes from because you just want to write so much of it down. It is extremely readable and combines clear explanations of theory with sound practical advice and insights from real world experience. I particularly appreciated definitions of concepts like the Babel instinct, boundary objects, salience, and archetypes.
Hi Fran
Thanks for your very kind words about my book. I’ve been tracking your reading via your blog posts for a while now, and have picked up some good links from your roving eye! I also liked your take on folksonomies among well-defined “expert” communities.
Hi Patrick
I am really just trying to map out the extent of my ignorance at the moment, so your book has been a godsend. It’s the closest thing I’ve found so far to a core text–a great subject overview and really useful bibliography.
I am very interested in language usage, especially in mediating “specialist” and “non-specialist” language. Reference editors have pondered on this theme for years, but folksonomy has opened up new dimensions and made it a very fashionable issue of debate!
Hi Fran
The link behind “Patrick Lambe” is wrong (i.e., https://www.vocabcontrol.com/www.greenchameleon.com).
Otherwise, I just discovered your blog (cannot even tell how) and enjoy reading your posts. They provide me with some food for thought (and some interesting links as well).
Regarding the issus of “specialist” and “non-specialist” language you may also have a look at http://www.steve.museum: “Steve provides a testbed for hypotheses about the social experiences offered by museums to both on-site and on-line visitors. The tagging data collected is structured to enable comparative studies about the meaning-making process around artworks, highlighting the difference between expert and non-professional vocabularies. ”
Personally, I am also very interested in how to integrate taxonomies and folksonomies best.
Hi Gerhard
Thank you for pointing out the broken link – it’s now fixed – and for your kind comments.
The Steve Museum site looks very interesting indeed. There doesn’t seem to have been a great deal of serious research into how people respond to vocabulary so it is good to hear about the project.
I was talking the other day to a taxonomist who specialises in life sciences and he felt that the folksonomic approach worked particularly well in biology and biochemistry. The “social” taggers are all pretty much subject experts anyway and the subject matter is changing so rapidly that the only hope of keeping up is to collaborate as much as possible. There are also a lot of international standards governing terminology and generally a spirit of co-operation in the international academic community.
It was quite different in pharmacology, as the drug companies don’t stick to nomenclature standards in the same way and are much less willing – mainly for commercial reasons – to share knowledge and so are much less keen on open taxonomy projects.
Fran