Taxonomy vs Ontology?,
to tag, or not to tag, or more specifically how to tag, that is the question. Up to now Connotea has only allowed you to choose from your own universe of tags when it offers suggestions in the type ahead box.
Now Benjamin Good from the
The Wilkinson Lab at the University of British Columbia has released a greasemonkey add on for connotea which allows you to plug in to an ontology that you might which to use for categorizing the references in your library.
He has names is the EntityDescriber
and there is plenty of info on it’s connotea page.
I think this is a major addition to connotea, and I would be glad to hear about people’s experiences with this. I must admit that I’m not working in an ontologically driven field myself, so I’m not using the tool in a formal way, which is why I would really like to hear back from people who do work with ontologies.
The issue of ontologies vs tags is one that is interesting and in my opinion there is great scope for both in a service like connotea.
Thanks Ben.