Clay Shirky's Writings About the Internet

I found this article fascinating, pushing the boundaries of classification to the web. This author describes how Google has stepped away from classification and let the users determine it after the fact. It is like a college that doesn't lay sidewalk until they see where the student's will walk. For a library person it is difficult to disregard a ontological classification system. They can be very useful in specific situations. I liked the how he did select two systems where they can work, the periodic element chart and the psychiatrists' Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. Essentially, he states that ontology works in a closed or smaller systems, but will not work for large bodies of information like the web.
He also described tagging and its use. I am interested in how tagging could help the music students at St. Olaf. Searching for music can be frustrating. There is so much there, but hard to dig out. I think if student's could tag titles or search terminology, that they could build their own terminology to find Concerto No. 1 by whomever.
Part of working at a library is the frustration of moving forward. Reading articles like this help me to think broadly and moving forward. There is so much more we could do to help our student's.