Thursday, April 3, 2008

Mm, Del.icio.us!

Did the guy who started del.icio.us have any idea what a vast collection of terrible puns would result from that name? I mean, it practically begs to be part of dumb blog post titles like the one above. People can't help themselves! I know I can't.

Well, regardless, I definitely see the value of del.icio.us and bookmarking sites like it. I have tagged links to sites that I meant to come back to later for research for an assignment, or just to read for fun when I had time, or to add to my RSS aggregator (if I didn't feel like signing in to add a subscription right that minute).

It's a big help to be able to have those bookmarks available from any computer I may happen to be sitting at, so I don't have to worry "did I add that to my 'favorites' at work, or at home?" and "should I write this down so I can remember to add it to my home computer too?"

Given that memorizing URLs (like memorizing phone numbers, now that I have a cell phone to keep track of those for me) is just not something I even try to do anymore, it makes life easier to know I can get to the one place where I made a note of it, no matter where I am.

I've been less interested in the social aspects of social bookmarking sites, though those are definitely present and could be useful in the right situation. Finding a good resource for an information need, and then seeing who else has tagged it, what they called it, and what else they've tagged with that same descriptor, could easily be a great pathway to uncovering resources you might not otherwise have come across.

The web is a big, wild place, where it's easy to get lost in irrelevant materials and miss useful ones, and having a means to follow other peoples' signposts over their specific paths through the wilderness, as well as set up your own, is a great feature.

If specific tags are assigned a certain meaning agreed upon by a particular group (say, everyone in this class agrees that we're going to use the random tag Kx107-o! for everything we think is cool), it can also be a way for groups to share information. I could subscribe to the RSS feed for that tag, and receive updates every time a class member finds something they think is cool--and since the tag is random and fairly unique, we're unlikely to get a lot of clutter from unrelated people using it for their own bookmarks.

I've been in courses (and am in them now!) where sites related to certain subjects we're discussing are tagged in this way, with a bookmark specific to the course and the topic, and it's a good way to see resources that classmates have discovered that enhance the assigned readings.

I have not used it to the extent that I think it could be used, but to the extent that I've used it, del.icio.us has been helpful to me. I think it's definitely a worthwhile program to be aware of for collecting bookmarks, and for its potential as a research tool and means of sharing information within a group.

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