Thing #30 -- More with Delicious

I hadn't actually created a Delicious account back in Thing 11, so I started this Thing by doing that. The built-in security checkers made that a little frustrating, however. I have been using the same password for all the accounts I create as part of the Things--makes it easier to remember. But Delicious kept telling me it shared too many letters with my username. After several username/password combinations I finally had to admit defeat and choose a completely different one. Hope I remember it!

As a new Delicious user I haven't explored it much beyond bookmarking. I tried to standardize my tags (controlled vocabulary is a familiar concept to librarians) and found the batch renaming and tagging functions useful as I developed my taxonomy. There is now a tag roll on my blog's sidebar.

One of the things I did was go through all the email messages and notes I've been collecting of web sites that I want to look at and possibly include on subject guides I maintain. Adding these sites to Delicious will make this process easier. I can produce a list of possible sites by tagging them for particular guides. It would be nice to hook the sites I've chosen on Delicious to the guide web pages so they update automatically when I add or delete one. I tried the basic link roll functionality, but it didn't quite work the way I wanted it too. Guess I'll have to tinker with it some more later.

Thing #11 -- Tagging and del.icio.us

One fun and useful aspect of tagging is the ESP Game. I first saw this in a presentation at ACRL last spring. The librarian said he showed it in his library instruction classes as an example of the benefits of using controlled vocabulary. The team behind the ESP Game is attempting to label all the images on the web by making it fun for people to provide tags for them. Once you start playing it can be addictive.

I'm a little of two minds about the usefulness of tags in libraries. Allowing users to add tags to the catalog makes more sense to me in public libraries than academic ones, but maybe that's because I haven't seen a good application of them in an academic setting. I know there is this strong movement towards involving the user,and for the most part I'm okay with that, but it also seems like we could be dumbing things down. As an academic librarian, where learning is supposed to be part of the point, I have a hard time with that.

I've known about del.icio.us for a couple of years now, but haven't used it. Whenever I'd explore the site, all the bookmarks and tags seemed overwhelming without a purpose for my exploration. And whenever I was searching for web sites on a subject, it never occurred to me to check out del.icio.us. So this was kind of a "lightbulb" moment for me--next time I'm looking for subject resources, or researching something for myself, I'll go to del.icio.us.

I also never thought to create a del.icio.us account for my bookmarks--although I could have used one recently when my work computer was replaced. While most of my personal files were transferred just fine, my browser profile, including my bookmarks, was wiped out.