Social Bookmarking

Two sets of reviews are the subject of this post. One at the State Library of Tasmania, concerning the book Born or bred?: Martin Bryant: the making of a mass murderer. The other is a series of reviews at Stonnington Library, Victoria. The question is how effective these reviews are, and how useful reviews are to libraries in general.

The Library of Tasmania reviews are useful. While there's only two, and only one has a rating, both go in-depth, summarizing the contents of the book in question. I notice that neither of them really present a judgement of the work, and just go for summarization, but I think that's useful in of itself. At the least, it can help a browser decide whether this work would interest them.

The series of reviews at Stonnington is a case of quantity over quality, with the reviews given never running more than a few sentences, though granted, this has the addition of constant ratings. These reviews do have some worth to them, but at times, their lack of length is to their detriment. For example, "Ad hoc production - very little (satisfying) analysis or synthesis!" is an example of a negative review, and "The reviews don't lie. Must read book if only to discover when and where the term, "flexible conscience" is used and, in what context" is an example of a positive review. Neither of these tell me anything bar what the reader thinks of the work, and as such, I have no means of gauging the work's quality/lack of it bar taking their word for it (or not).

Concerning the question of whether libraries should be providing these services...well, I feel the Stonnington reviews are an example of what can go wrong with user-generated reviews, and it's by far not the only site that shows what this system can entail. User reviews can vary widely in quality, won't necessarily strive to be objective, and even if made with the best of intentions, won't necessarily be that useful. The Library of Tasmania reviews defy these potential issues, but I feel they're the exception rather than the rule. That said, I think this would be a net positive feature for libraries to have - in a Web 2.0/3.0 age, user participation is expected, and as per the previous blog post, I have already outlined the benefits of a social media presence. That, and I would trust that the average browser would be able to evaluate when a reviews is useful and when it isn't.

My local library (Warringah Libraries) has a rating system, where users can leave a star rating (1-5). A key exists for what each star represents. However, it does not allow users to leave comments. One has to login to leave a rating.