I'm not sure who did the first tag cloud. The tag cloud article in Wikipedia currently credits several people, including Stewart Butterfield of Flickr. Although usually associated with informal tagging, there isn't any reason why cloud displays can't work with controlled vocabularies.
And speaking of controlled vocabularies, we now have FAST subject headings in the copy of WorldCat we use to generate WorldCat Identities, and we've started to experiment with them. There are lots of possibilities, but one of the simplest is show the most commonly used headings for each name. Here are Rudyard Kipling's top 50 FAST headings displayed in a cloud:
Adventure stories, English. Animals. Art. Asia. Authors. Authors, English. Boys. British. Camels. Children of the rich. Children's poetry, English. Children's stories. Children's stories, English. Colonies in literature. English literature--Indic influences. Fantasy fiction, English. Feature films. Feral children. Fiction--Authorship. Fishers. Fishing boats. Great Britain. Homes. Illustrated books--Extra-illustrated. Imperialism in literature. India. Irish. Jungle animals. Jungles. Lamas. Literature. Manners and customs. Mowgli (Fictitious character). Orphans. Political and social views. Political fiction, English. Politics and literature. Rescues. Saltwater fishing. Schooners. Sea stories. Short stories. Short stories, English. Soldiers. Talking books. Teenage boys. Travel. United States. Voyages and travels. World War, 1914-1918.
The heading that caught my eye was 'Feral children'.
Before these clouds actually float into Identities we'll need to have pages for each of the headings, and our web designer may have some ideas about how they should look, but they look useful enough that I think we'll do it.
--Th