Folksonomies, the Web and Search Engines

The aim of this special issue of Webology is to explore developments in the design of folksonomies, knowledge organization systems, and search engines to reflect end user preferences for describing items of interest. Particular emphasis is placed on folksonomies, an area of study that has grown exponentially since the term was first coined by Thomas Vander Wal in 2004: "Folksonomy is the result of personal free tagging of information and objects (anything with a URL) for one's own retrieval. The tagging is done in a social environment (usually shared and open to others). Folksonomy is created from the act of tagging by the person consuming the information" (Vander Wal, 2007). Since 2004, social software applications and their use of tagging have continued to increase in popularity; in its site dedicated to such applications, Wikipedia (2008) lists no less that 11 extant media sharing sites and 26 social bookmarking sites. This list does not take into account the approximate 20 media cataloguing sites, not to mention the innumerable blogging sites that employ tagging.