Folksonomies, Social Tagging and Scholarly Articles / Les folksonomies, l'étiquetage social et les articles scientifiques

This article will discuss the potential role of folksonomies and social tagging in the information control of scholarly articles. The article reviews claims that folksonomies may replace traditional indexing, criticisms of folksonomies and suggestions for their improvement. The primary conclusion is that, although folksonomies may not replace traditional thesaurus-based indexing, social tagging, as a means of both organizing scholarly articles and by drawing together groups of scholars interested in the same, and especially emergent, fields, can provide a useful method of information control by means of scholarly communication The conclusions draw upon the 1968 book by Patrick Wilson Two Kinds of Power: An Essay in Bibliographic Control.