Thing 10 -- Tagging and Delicious

Social bookmarking is one of those phrases that makes me stop to think--what does it mean? After watching the video and reading the comments on NEFLIN's blog, it appears to be an easy way to keep up with your favorite websites, to organize them according to indexing terms you assign, and to share them with others. It sounds like it would be a great way to organize websites for library users. Hopefully our library patrons will find the new library website so useful they will bookmark it! Tagging makes the concept of bookmarking even more appealing. The ability to organize websites using terms you come up with yourself could be very useful. Beyond that, the ability to see what websites other people are bookmarking and tagging would be a very powerful resource....especially if you find a user with similar tastes.
Next I looked at del.icio.us to see what all the excitement is about. This is another Yahoo product which does make it easy for one who already has a Yahoo account. I already had some sites bookmarked as a result of a NEFLIN workshop I attended in the fall of 2006, called Social Software in Libraries. It was a hoot to see Unshelved pop up on my list of bookmarks. I had forgotten all about this. Haha. Today I added another, more important and serious bookmark -- Medpedia. I only hope that I remember to use it! I also added a gadget to my 23 things blog that will allow anyone to bookmark my blog using Delicious. It was pretty easy to do, since they have the answer to this question in their help file: "How do I add a "Bookmark on Delicious" button to my website or blog?" It's a matter of copying and pasting the html code for bookmark on delicious into your blog. After you sign in you click on dashboard, then on layout, then on add a gadget. The next screen is where you will paste the code you have copied. Then save it and tada! you have succeeded.