Using a discourse analytical approach this thesis examines a selection of user reviews concerning Stephenie Meyer’s Young AdultNovel Twilight, published at LibraryThing 2009-07-01 – 2010-12-31. The aim of the study is to identify and shed light upon the conceptions relating to target audiences distinguishable in the reviews and todiscuss the possible consequences of categorizing fiction by age of theintended reader. In order to accomplish this, the study examines the conveyed images of Young Adult fiction and grown ups’ reading of Twilight.The thesis concludes that several discourses regarding Young Adult fiction are distinguishable in the material; some of which concern level, quality, and writing style, others thematic and contentbasedaspects, while one concerns fiction aimed specifically at girls. The thesis also concludes that grown ups’ reading of Twilight is sometimes portrayed as normal and sometimes as abnormal, and that some aspects of the book are made out to be problematic for an older audience while other aspects are made out to be less so.Furthermore the results suggest that discourses which associate a certain kind of content with a certain target group might have a restricting effect upon potential readers. / Program: Bibliotekarie

Research paper (M.L.I.S.)--Victoria University of Wellington, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references.

The aim of this bachelor thesis is to study and analyze the impact of LibraryThing's tagmoderation process and tag cloud limits in the library catalog, and assess the differencesbetween tags on their web page and tags in “LibraryThing for Libraries”.Communication with personnel on LibraryThing regarding their moderation processwas established, and the results were then compared with the collected data in thisstudy. Tags from 20 different books, collected from 2 different library catalogs, onewith a tag limit of 15 and one with 25, and from LibraryThing's web page werecollected and analyzed. The theoretical framework of the thesis was based on J. T.Tennis, and the data were organized using a modified version of Golder & Huberman'sseven different functions found in tags (2006).The results show that LibraryThing's claim that they only remove the inherentlypersonal tags are only partially true, since some other kinds of tags have disappeared aswell. In some cases a certain concept has been included in one book and excluded inanother. Tags concerning opinions or attributes of a book, have often been excluded,these could however serve as valuable forms of recommendations to other people,despite their personal context. The comparison between the library tag clouds limited toeither 15 or 25 tags suggested that tag clouds with an increased number of tags gave amore pronounced picture regarding the contents of the book. However, the number ofproblematic tags with synonymous or redundant information also increased when thesize of the library tag cloud grew.

This study explores how the social tags are employed by users of LibraryThing, a popular web 2.0 social networking site for cataloging books, to describe works on Asian women in representing themes within the context of intersectionality. Background literature in the domain of subject description of works has focused on race and gender representation within traditional controlled vocabularies such as the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH). This study explores themes related to intersectionality in order to analyze how users construct meaning in their social tags. The collection of works used to search for social tags came from the Association of College and Research Libraries’ list on East Asian, South and Southeast Asian, and Middle Eastern women. A pilot study was conducted comprising of a limited sample in each of the three domains, which helped generate a framework of analysis that was used in application for the larger sample of works on Asian women. The full study analyzed 1231 social tags collected from 122 works on Asian women. Findings from this study showed that users construct a variety of intersections relating to gender and ethnicity for works on Asian women. Overall findings from this showed that gender and gender-related constructs were the most common subject of tags employed for works on Asian women. Users more often referred to geography rather than ethnicity when describing the materials on Asian women. Interesting themes to emerge involved how gender and other constructs differed among the three domains. Tags describing the majority of East Asia, such as Chinese and Japanese were most common in the East Asian dataset. Countries not considered the “majority” in South and Southeast Asia were often used, such as Indonesia and the Philippines. Themes of sexuality and religion were much more prevalent in the Middle Eastern set of tags. Social tags act as a mechanism for social commentary. Researchers have access to a plethora of constructions available to them through these social tags; such abundance of information is a valuable resource to understanding how the general populace understands intersections and constructs identity.