Tagging your collection

If you have ever thought that things should be easier to find in Encore, you might consider tagging items in your collection.  Tags are indexed access points that can be used to find items in Encore and even curate them into collections.  Those curated collections could be a permanent solution, or simply serve a temporary need.  Tags can also provide natural language access to items, where Library of Congress subjects fall short.  

Tagging in Encore has always been available, but only few libraries have taken advantage of it so far.  So far, it has only been made available to staff, but some libraries choose to open it up to patrons too.  Any user who is authorized may add a tag while viewing the full record in Encore.    The tags must then be “approved” to be live in Encore by MHLS staff , who have administrative access.  Tags can later be turned off too.   Once enabled, tags can be used as a search term in Encore.

 

How have tags been used at MHLS?  Mostly, to group items into curated collections.  

Curating collections: Click the titles to view in encore.  

The Phoenicia Jerry Bartlett Memorial Angling Collection
The Phoenicia Public library was one of the first libraries to use tagging to curate a collection.  In their community fishing is HUGE!  They have an amazing collection devoted angling, which they highlight on their website, but when it came to finding these items in Encore, there was no way to pull them together…until they tagged their collection!   Today Today 727 items are included in this collection, which patrons can search in Encore from anywhere.

Columbia