Since writing this post I’ve actually used a Tagxedo image in a some slides I’ve written. I pulled together a lot of definitions of ‘research data’ and created a tag cloud – the result is a really good illustration of the key words used in definitions, and hence the key concepts people want those definitions to convey. The librarian in me can see that there is still much mileage in the idea of tagging, after all it’s metadata for the masses!

That functionality is why I find tag clouds useful. They don’t need to have novelty value to do it and I’m not aware of something else *with* novelty value that does the job. So why worry ? It’s too easy to worry about things needing to be new and refreshed all the time. Sometimes it’s necessary, and other times it isn’t.