Here is some interesting research being conducted by a collective of art museums (including SFMOMA and Guggenheim) with project Steve Tagger: a social tagging experiment exploring the benefits to folksonomy in the field of art. It reminds me of the discussion conducted a couple years earlier by a panel of professors and developers at SXSW [podcast]. Common questions being explored are: how does tagging affect context (‘development’ to a progammer vs. an architect)? How do people relate to the subject?
Participating briefly in this experiment, I found myself tagging fine art pieces according to how I tag in my stock photo accounts: “green, blue, renaissance, decor” – common for a designer, but a dull approach compared to terms that already existed in the project, like “swirly wirly”.
Most striking is the complete openness of the project, which invites all members of the public to tag art, which I think is brilliant: why conduct research in a small focus group, when the audience really is the entire internet public? Why not conduct research, inspire the community, and populate your database – for free – all at the same time? As long as people are tagging responsibly (“your momma”, being the least offensive I could state here…), the return for both parties is valuable. In fact, the Library of Congress took the same approach to public tagging with incredible success: 1.1 million views over two days, and a heck of a lot of tagging (including chinese, arabic, and russian languages). Results like this are hard to ignore; an approach well worth considering in research!