Week 6, Thing 13

Del.icio.us was another of the applications where I got caught up in looking at content and spent hours following links, reading articles and posts, and watching videos. The idea of social cataloging or folksonomy makes a lot of sense to me, because I have seen the frustration of students whose reference points didn’t match up with Sears. This has lead to some creative cataloging where I tried to put a summary or content statement that used the keywords that students would search for when doing assignments. The reason for limiting subject heading in the past was the need to standardize because time or space (think card catalog) requirements made it humanly impossible to record all possible subjects. The computer really opens up the possibilities. Why not have as many ways of getting to information as possible? The tag clouds are helpful because they show the many possibilities while bringing the ones more people found useful to your attention first. As a visual person, I appreciate this.

The SJLibrary’s del.icio.us page , was a treasure chest of information. The temptation is to try to read them all. If I were writing an article on Web 2.0, say for a parent news letter, this would be a good place to reference articles, because they are selected by library professionals. With students, a teacher could set up a link list of pages he or she has selected, or a link to a trusted del.ioci.us site. With technophobe teachers, the librarian could collaborate on setting up a list or encourage a whole department to work together on a page. The students would benefit by exposure to quality information online and also by the teachers working together.

I found that some of the sites listed were so interesting that I had to save them, so I opened an account. I am thinking about importing my old favorites list from Internet Explorer. One of the considerations is whether to copy all my links which include of my interests outside the library profession. I know that as librarians we can justify almost any subject matter, but it feels like too much self exposure to include my genealogy and other subject links to anyone who is just browsing from link to link.