Thing #14: Tagging & social bookmarking in Delicious

Photo by cambodia4kidsorg

Tagging is an open and informal method of categorizing that allows users to associate keywords with online content (web pages, pictures & posts). In the library world we are familiar with subject cataloging that follows a strict set of rules and uses a predefined set up terms such as the Library of Congress subject headings. Tagging is the opposite. Tagging is unstructured and freeform, allowing users to create connections between data any way they want.

In the past few weeks, we’ve already explored a few sites – Flickr and LibraryThing to name two – that allow users to take advantage of tagging and in week five many even used a common tag (NELearns2.0) to create an association between photos that we individually uploaded.

This week we want to take a look at a popular social bookmarking site called Delicious. Delicious 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 Delicious 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 users’ filing cabinet, but with this powerful bookmarking tool each user's filing cabinet helps to build an expansive knowledge network.

Current Delicious users may have noticed that the site has changed this summer. On July 31, 2008 they went live with a new interface along with changing their URL from del.icio.us to delicious.com. If you want to know more about the changes you can read about it on the Delicious blog.

For this discovery exercise you will watch a 3 1/2 minute video about Delicious then have a chance to explore the site. The video was created before Delicious updated their site however the information provided in the video is still relevant.

Discovery Exercise:

1. View the Social Bookmarking in Plain English video. It will provide you with an overview how Delicious works. You will need speakers or a headset to hear the video.
   
2. Explore Delicious. 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. You may also want to look at the Nebraska Library Commission's account. The links were taken from our Best of the Web site. The Holdrege Public Library is also using Delicious. They have even put a tagroll that was generated using Delicious on their website.
   
4. Spend a few minutes thinking about how folks tagged their link. If you had to assign tags to the NebraskAccess website what tags would you use? Take a look at the tags other Delicious users have assigned. Do you agree with them? What tags would you assign?
   
5. Create a blog post about your experience and thoughts about this tool. Can you see the potential of this tool for research assistance? Would it be a easy way to share bookmarks with groups of people such as book groups? Or just as an easy way to create bookmarks that can be accessed from anywhere?

OPTIONAL: If you’re up to the challenge, create a Delicious account for yourself and discover how this useful bookmarking tool can replace your traditional browser bookmark list. You can even add a link rolls, tag rolls or a network badge to your blog.