Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Thing#13: Delicious

Note from Sarah: I will be gone for most of this week. If you run into problems with any of the 23 Things, please talk to your library's Staff Development committee member. I won't be able to respond to emails until Tuesday at the earliest. Have fun with Week 6!

Thing #13: Del.icio.us and Social Bookmarking

For this exercise, we'll explore Del.icio.us, a social bookmarking manager which allows you to bookmark a web page and add tags to categorize your bookmarks. Because they're stored on the site and not your computer, your bookmarks and favorite links can be accessed from any computer anywhere. In addition, you can label your bookmarks with tags, which will enable you to find links that are of similar interest (as deemed so by other Delicious users).


A few of our previous exercises such as Flickr and GoodReads allow users to take advantage of tagging. Tagging is an open and informal method of categorizing that allows users to associate keywords with online content (webpages, pictures & posts). Unlike library subject cataloging, which follows a strict set of guidelines (i.e. the Library of Congress subject headings), tagging is completely unstructured and free-form, allowing users to create connections between data anyway they want.

To complete Thing #13:

1) Familiarize yourself with Del.icio.us and its capabilities. Check out their "About" page to see what you can do. For some screenshots of the link adding process, click here!

2) Explore the site options and try clicking on a bookmark that has also been bookmarked by a lot of other users. Can you see the comments they added about this bookmark or the tags that they used to categorize this reference?


3) Create a blog post about your experience and thoughts about this tool. Can you see the potential of this tool for research assistance and library services? Or is it just as an easy way to create bookmarks that can be accessed from anywhere? Let us know your thoughts.

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