Tags vs Keywords (MAKING A MUSEUM: Materializing Regimes of Value with the NYC Department of Sanitation)

Tags and keywords in our blog as well as in our archive are designed to work together, rather than independently. Keywords are more rigid and function as our "official" classification system taken from a specific and uniform taxonomical system (list of terms to classiy and organize knowledge). Tags are more informal and allow users to use words or phrases that might not be represented in the list of keywords, but that help classify our objects (texts and images). Tags can also eventually be used and added by users other than ourselves who will be able to access our collection later on.
Using both tags and keywords will allow us to have both a formal, uniform system of cataloguing, as well as an informal system that will make our collections searchable and cross-referenced by the terms that we (as a group, but also as individual users) find relevant. For the tags, please try to use singulars rather than plurals (ie. worker rather than workers) unless you think it is absolutely necessary to include plurals as well.

To look as examples of how tags and keywords are used to search collections on other sites, please check out
http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/collection/database/browsekeywords.php
http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/socialTagging.html

Compare this to a more rigid classifying system like the Smithsonian
http://acsmith.si.edu/emuwebanthweb/pages/nmnh/anth/Query.php

Here are some definitions:

A tag is a (relevant) keyword or term associated with or assigned to a piece of information (e.g. a picture, a geographic map, a blog entry, or video clip) as a whole or only to a part of it

Folksonomy (also known as collaborative tagging , social classification, social indexing, social tagging, and other names) is the practice and method of collaboratively creating and managing tags to annotate and categorize content. In contrast to traditional subject indexing, metadata is not only generated by experts but also by creators and consumers of the content. Usually freely chosen keywords are used instead of a controlled vocabulary.
The term folksonomy is generally attributed to Thomas Vander Wal. It is a portmanteau of the words folk (or folks) and taxonomy that specifically refers to subject indexing systems created within Internet communities. According to Vander Wal, a folksonomy is "tagging that works".
Folksonomy should be distinguished from folk taxonomy, a cultural practice that has been widely documented in anthropological work. Folk taxonomies are culturally supplied, intergenerationally transmitted, and relatively stable classification systems that people in a given culture use to make sense of the entire world around them (not just the Internet)