Thing #12 Tagging and Discover Delicious

I first discovered Delicious at this past TLA (Library in Black presentation) and it quickly became my lifesaver. I had 2 libraries and of course all bookmarks were posted at the other library or at home. Delicious quickly created a spot where I could access my common sites from anywhere. If that was the extent of my use I could be happy, but as this Thing has taught me Delicious has a much broader appeal than just my personal use. The video divided Delicious into 2 parts how to DO delicious and how to USE Delicious. I have always found Delicious easy to DO, plugging in and bookmarking sites but didn't realize how easy it was to use and share with others.

The 3 hints given in the video were to check out popular tags to see what others have bookmarked, this makes the site invaluable to locating new sites. Sharing tags with others was a second hint. The one that I felt had application to research and sharing with colleagues was using "Unique Tags". By sharing this unique tags with others, they can share their sites via the tag. Teachers, librarians and students can create an assignment in which they must post via Delicious and under a certain tag. Research can then be generated from the material bookmarked to those tags.

Tags or as they called "Creative organization" is an important aspect to this site and I must say I have not used them properly. I have locked myself in to the idea of keywords that I learned about in library classes and how they need to be proper and limiting. I need to remember that the tags are for me to remember how to locate my increasing lists of sites and so far it is manageable but without the use of tags I can see how I could begin to lose what I have in the myriad of things I am bookmarking. I have been through this scenario earlier with my favorites and had to discover a folder and filing system to manage them...now I must learn tagging to help organize my sites.