Knowledge Organization (KO) is published by IMR Press from Volume 52 Issue 1 (2025). Previous articles were published by another publisher under the CC-BY licence, and they are hosted by IMR Press on imrpress.com as a courtesy and upon agreement.
Curated Folksonomies: Three Implementations of Structure through Human Judgment
Julia Bullard 1
Affiliation
Article Info
1 The University of British Columbia, iSchool (Library, Archival and Information Studies), Vancouver Campus | Musqueam Traditional Territory, Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, 484-1961 E. Mall, Vancouver, BC, Canada
Abstract
Traditional knowledge organization approaches struggle to make large user-generated collections navigable, especially when these collections are quickly growing, in which currency is of particular concern, for which professional classification design is too costly. Many of these collections use folksonomies for labelling and organization as a low-cost but flawed knowledge organization approach. While several computational approaches offer ways to ameliorate the worst flaws of folksonomies, some user-generated collections have implemented a human judgment-centered alternative to produce structured folksonomies. An analysis of three such implementations reveals design differences within the space. This approach, termed “curated folksonomy,” presents a new object of study for knowledge organization and represents one answer to the tension between scalability and the value of human judgment.
