I like to find things quickly.  I'm also impatient.  This is why I want to shout: "hey everyone - serve up the tags!" 

When I was little my mom lost her car keys on a regular basis.  It was always a last minute race to find them and get to school on time. I don't know if this is where my fondness for organizaiton developed, or if it was written in the stars on the day of my birth, but it's part of me now.  Sometimes a good thing; sometimes a control thing.  Give me a grid and I feel good.

I had my first Aha with tags while I was surfing a website called BuzzShout (http://buzzshout.com/).  I clicked on the word "community" (not knowing what was going to happen) and up popped all of these new community-based websites.  In that moment, a taglover was born.

Think of the beauty of tags.  Take my closet for instance.  It's actually in fairly good shape - somewhat color-coded.  Whites with whites; pinks with pinks.  Sometimes.  But what if i could press a button that said pink-polka-dots, and voila!, there's that scarf, that little slip, and that vinyl earring case from the Venice Biennale.  All of them with pink polka-dots.  This is what tags could do to my accessorizing.

With artslant, if everyone tags their stuff, we will be able to sift and filter through all those artists and exhibits and galleries and museums in strange and interesting ways.  E.g., give me all artists who work in resin and use animal imagery.  Or, find me all exhibits that had work about the urban landscape.  Or, show me all galleries that feature Latin-American artists.  The possibilities are wonderful.

So "hey everyone - serve up the tags!"

How to Use Tags on artslant:

Searching the Tag Cloud:  You'll find our tag cloud at the top of most searchable pages in artslant.  Simply click on a word to find all listings under that description.  To clear a tag search, hit the [clear] link next to the search parameters on the right-hand side of your list.

Adding Tags to Your Content:  When adding content (your exhibit, event, spotlight studios...) look for the Tag field in the add form.  Use single words (or hyphens for phrases like mixed-media) with spaces between them.  Each word becomes a tag.  You will notice that drop downs appear to help you choose tags that are already popular.

Some suggestions for tagging categories: medium, general themes, genres, distinctive materials, influences, regional descriptions.

- georgia 1/12/2007