Blog Post #4: The Job of Organizing

While it used to be the job of professional catalogers, currently through Web 2.0, the duty of organizing books and materials can basically be done by anyone. More and more, everyday people who are not trained in cataloging materials are doing so. I do feel that it is great that people can share their opinions and suggestions for sources; however, because these people are not professionally trained catalogers and indexers, there could be resulting issues of inaccuracy. Librarians are experts in their field, and organizing materials is their specialty; therefore, I feel that the job of cataloging should remain with the librarian rather than taking the risk of having outdated information and a faulty system for those who are seeking accurate and reliable sources. Folksonomies and tagging web sites can indeed be beneficial, and tags themselves can be incredibly helpful. There are, however, still issues that remain regarding accuracy. Untrained, everyday folks are able to tag and organize, and the tags placed on sites and sources may not be appropriate to the content of the source, which leads to imprecision for those who are seeking information. While I feel that it is nice to have the ability for people to add their own information and opinions, there is still a lack of reliability when these tasks are not performed by trained individuals such as librarians.