Keywords:
images, taxonomy, tagging, vocabulary

Abstract:
This paper reports on the findings of research designed to test the suitability of two controlled vocabularies to source keywords and ensure the discoverability of images collected in a national digital image bank repository. This image bank forms part of The Learning Exchange, the world's first interactive library - or digital repository - of learning resources for social work education. The content includes interactive games, video clips, case studies, official publications and radio broadcasts and may be used for non-commercial, educational purposes. This rich variety of content enables an active community of educators to develop and disseminate high quality learning materials. Each resource inside the Learning Exchange has a detailed catalogue record. Due to the subjective nature of images, this research was conducted to inform the cataloguing process used to describe each image. An online survey was designed requiring respondents to 'tag' sequentially a series of 30 images with up to three key words or phrases per image. The 30 images were selected to be representative of the types of image to be stored and catalogued inside the image bank repository. An invitation to take part in the survey was distributed on two UK social work education mailing lists: 191 individuals took part in the survey generating 3975 individual tags. At the end of the survey period, responses were analysed and mapped against the two controlled vocabularies to ascertain the percentage of responses appearing on either or both of the vocabularies. Whilst a significant proportion of the words and phrases used by respondents could be mapped to terms (or their equivalents) in the controlled vocabularies, many could not. The implications of these findings for cataloguing and discovering content are discussed in the context of a wider review of the literature on 'folksonomies' (or free tagging) versus taxonomies and controlled vocabularies.