Tagging brings the community together

Tagging is important because it allows users to identify the photos they're sharing, indentify them in ways that others can more easily find them. Tagging helps place photos on the web so that anyone searching for "nurse, st_mary's, 1914" or any other can find just what they're looking for. And items tagged are further identified by new tags placed by the people who find them. So a "st_mary's" is further defined by "new york" or "black & white" or "hospital" or whatever, defining an item from general to specific. And the more people who tag an item, a photo, the more people who can then find that item. Tagging creates communities of like-thinking individuals who discover each other by learning how the individuals in the group further define tagged items.