Even if you’re not sure what tagging is, you have probably done it already. If you’re participated in the first part of WLS Learns, you had a chance to play around with tagging when we covered LibraryThing and Flickr. 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., Library of Congress subject headings), tagging is completely unstructured and freeform, allowing users to create connections between data anyway they want. The art of tagging by folks who are not librarians or catalogers, is called “folksonomy.”
As I mentioned, we’ve already explored two sites-–Flickr and LibraryThing–that allow users to take advantage of tagging. This week, we’re going to explore tagging even more with the popular social bookmarking site called del.icio.us (typed in as http://delicious).
del.icio.us is a social bookmarking manager which allows you to bookmark a web page and add tags to categorize your bookmarks. Many users find that the real power of del.icio.us is in the social network aspect, which allows you to see how other users have tagged similar links and also discover other websites that may be of interest to you. You can think of it as peering into another user’s filing cabinet, but with this powerful bookmarking tool each user’s filing cabinet helps to build an expansive knowledge network. To get a better idea of this awesome tool, here is another great Common Craft video:
So… for this discovery exercise, we’re going to take a look at del.icio.us and learn about this popular bookmarking tool.
Exploration Exercise:
- View the 8 minute del.icio.us tutorial to get a good overview of its features.
- Check out the Getting Started section on del.icio.us.
- 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?
- Log in using the user name and password for I sent with the notice of this new posting (3/23/09) and see what bookmarks I’ve collected. Add some of your own that you think colleagues would find useful. Tags Too!
- Create a blog post about your experience and thoughts about this tool. Can you see the potential of this tool for research assistance? Or just as an easy way to create bookmarks that can be accessed from anywhere?
