Tagging and all that jazz

Hi All,

I just signed up to Delicious (thank God it isn't 'Del.icio.us' anymore -- that was so annoying!). The process of getting started was very easy. I ended up importing the bookmarks I already had on my PC.

I like it how you can choose to share or withhold bookmarks; this way you can use the same account for personal and professional purposes. The tagging process seemed quite easy -- just click 'Edit' to add, delete or change a tag. I used underscores as replacements for spaces. i.e. instead of typing 'Web 2.0' I typed 'Web_2.0'. I did this because I was worried that 'Web 2.0' would be read as 'Web' and '2.0'... I haven't actually tested that theory, however. I can definitely see the benefits in being able to view bookmarks that have been assigned the same tags by other people. It is time efficient to search for sites this way.

After assigning tags I felt as though I had been too general. For instance, I had tagged heaps of bookmarks as 'Personal'. It occurred to me, however, that it would probably have been better to create a 'Personal' tag bundle, and then give bookmarks within this more specific tags... It goes to show the importance of thinking carefully about a filing system before implementing it!

I think the library could use this technology in a number of ways. You could use Delicious to tag useful websites for students (this is what Kathy has done at the Med Library -- soon to be seen in the new LibGuides). You could also use it among staff as a reference/professional development tool. i.e. tag conference websites, catalogues, professional associations etc...

I think this type of technology encourages interaction and a stronger sense of community. I could imagine this would be useful to most students, but especially those isolated geographically (e.g. distance students).

I also checked out Technorati. I guess Google is like searching the full text of a document while Technorati is like searching Subject Headings -- in theory more specific results. The only problem is when people don't use tags uniformly. For instance, I found posts tagged 'Web2' and 'Web2.0'. I don't use tags in my blog posts but will from now on!

Cheers,
Kate