We’re proud to announce that Acumen now has integrated tagging functionality. But what the heck does that mean?

Let’s say you’re looking at an item in Acumen and you think: How in the world would someone interested in X find this item if the information with it doesn’t mention X? 

Rather than lament the incompleteness of the item description, you can instead input your own descriptive words and phrases in the tagging pane. They will be added to the record for that item — which means you can now search on those words or phrases and get that item as a result. You’ll be helping fellow researchers identify things more easily!

Tagging is generally an addition to existing data. Sometimes the person originally describing the item didn’t know exactly what or who they were looking at, or they just don’t know what you know. Where there just isn’t very much data or maybe any, tagging descriptions are even more important.

Let’s look at some examples:

What’s happening here? The information with the photo just says, View of workers constructing a building at a Woodward Iron Company site.

If you know something about construction, you might be able to give a more specific description.

Who are these folks? Right now, all we know is that former UA President Joab Thomas is on the left.

If you were at UA during the early 1980s — especially if you were at the Sesquicentennial Ball — you might be able to identify the others.

If you’re looking for images of the Statue of Liberty, you wouldn’t find this item because we don’t create descriptions for sheet music cover art. But you would if someone tagged it “statue of liberty.”

Ditto this illustration of the Eiffel Tower:

How does tagging work?

1. Click the tag icon, found to the right of the main viewer window
2. Type your descriptive tags into the entry box, separating tags with commas
   • Example: spring fling, streamers, dance floor
3. Click on the blue ‘Add Tags’ button

When you’re done, the screen will look like this, with your newly added tag at the top of the pane, in blue:

That tag in blue is clickable, leading you to a results page with any other items that might’ve been tagged the same way.

Tags show up in the results page in the right-hand column, as in this example.

If you want to search on a particular user tag, you can also simply type tag:[keyword] into the search box.

So next time you look at an item in Acumen and think, There’s something missing, add it as a user tag!