Structuring the field(s): user-generated tags and the archive at CBUT Vancouver

This thesis explores the potential conflict between user-generated tags and traditional archiving practices in the broadcasting industry. Changing technological configurations in the field of television news often have unforeseen consequences. The installation of a video server at Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Vancouver Television in 2007 has the potential to shape the process of accessioning records used by the media librarians by creating new possibilities for the collection of tags throughout the production process. The current information architecture consists of a data structure and a set of practices that combines descriptive metadata constructed by media librarians with automatically generated metadata gathered from the production process. Allowing user-generated data in the form of descriptive tags attached to media assets to pass through to the information architecture has the capacity to destabilize the existing taxonomy of controlled terms used by the librarians. Any move towards allowing tags into the system should proceed with extreme caution.