You could take a look at the Powerhouse Museum collections online at <http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/collection/database/> which lets users tag items. Seb Chan did a presentation about this at the Museums & the Web conference in April (paper online at <http://www.archimuse.com/mw2007/papers/chan/chan.html>). User keyword tags are separate from 'official' ones (example here:<http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/collection/database/?irn=10755&search=kylie&images=&c=&s=>. 

Flickr.com works the same way - users can tag your images, but even better, they can add comments. We've had some of our stuff on Flickr since last August, and it looks like people are much more likely to add coments than to add new tags (see for example <http://www.flickr.com/photos/eastlothian/261376322/>) Or maybe the tags I used were just perfect and complete! 

We will be going down the user-contributed content route when our collections start to go online later this year. I have had one person pull a face at the thought (an archivist as it happens), but the point is that the way we have catalogued collections, and in particular the terminology we have used, do not make it easy for the non-expert (or even the expert at times) to find things even when they know we have them, because they just don't use the right words. You do after all have admin control over user content - you can delete it if it's inappropriate! But allowing users to add to the content will over time make searching (and researching) more fruitful for all.

Best wishes

Pete
-- 
Peter M Gray
Museums Officer
East Lothian Council

www.eastlothianmuseums.org
www.prestongrange.org
www.jmbt.org.uk
www.dunbarmuseum.org
www.eastlothian.gov.uk/museums


-----Original Message-----

I was just at a conference on eLearning and Web 2.0 where the site
Steve.museum was featured. It is a social tagging site for museum
objects. I was wondering if anyone on here was familiar with it or if
their museum was participating and what you thought of it? I'm also
wondering if it is making registrars clutch their heads and scream
like a stunned monkey at the lack of control over the tags. :)

Deb


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