Why should you know about social bookmarking?

Have you had this problem?

• You are at home and you find a website that will be very useful on the reference desk at work but you're tired and you don't feel like opening your e-mail to send the link to yourself?
• As you bookmark websites over the years your bookmarks folder gets harder and harder to navigate and keep organized?
  
• Your desk or the reference desk computer hard drive dies and you lose all your bookmarks?
• You're researching a topic and you wish you could see what other people have been able to find?

Online bookmarking can help avoid all of these problems. Online communities such as Delicious (owned by Yahoo!, and formerly named del.icio.us) let you quickly save your bookmarks on the web for free, and share them with everyone -- or no one.

Delicious will let you:

• Save and access your bookmarks from any computer or phone with an internet connection.
• Share your bookmarks with others and see what others are bookmarking.
• Keep your bookmarks private, if you wish.
• Find other people who are interested in the same topics as you, and see what they are bookmarking.
  

Because most of the people on delicious are sharing and tagging their bookmarks, a very specialized search engine has been created over time. Google indexes everything on the web by keyword, but delicious indexes only the sites people have found useful enough to bookmark, and the searchable access -- the tags -- is human-generated.

Discovery Exercise

Preparation

• Think of possible user names. You won't be able to change this once your account is created. If you have a Yahoo! ID, try that first.
  
• Are you allowed to download and install programs on this computer? Delicious lets you save bookmarks without installing the icons to your browser (as shown in the video), but doing so make it a lot easier.
  
• Are you using a shared computer? Communicate with the people you share it with and tell them that you'll be adding icons to the browser's toolbar.

Let's get started!
Exercise: We will be creating an account for the online bookmarking service Delicious.com and either downloading its toolbar buttons or adding the Delicious "bookmarklets" which require no download.
Click here for the instructions (and come back here when you are finished)

To complete this exercise, please:

1. Bookmark the URL (web address) of the Baker's Dozen wiki to your new Delicious account and give it three or more tags.
   
   
2. Go to the bottom of this page where it says Threads.
   
   
3. Click Post a new thread (underneath and over to the right).
   
   
4. Post the URL (web address) for your delicious account.

What is tagging?
Tagging vs. Subject Headings vs. Folders
Tagging isn't hierarchical the way that old fashioned bookmark folders (Main folder > sub folder) or library catalog subject headings (Main heading > sub heading) are. Each tag stands on its own. Once you get used to this, it is very freeing. Your bookmark doesn't have to be in just one folder, it can be accessed by any term that you think makes sense, any term by which you think you might look for it later.

For example, I have developed a shorthand when a bookmark is for a specific use. If a bookmark is for work, it gets the tag '4work.' If it is for a friend it might get tagged '4Inga.' It is common for people to mark something interesting for later reading 'toread.' You can also create your own rating system by giving a so-so site ** and a great site *****. No one is telling you what tags to use, so you can use what makes sense to you.

In delicious, a bookmark can have a nearly unlimited number of tags.

How to pick tags

• Tags can describe the subject, location, name, category, people, places, date, ideas -- anything you can think of. Delicious usually will suggest some for you based upon what other people have used.
  
• Tags on delicious need to be one word, no spaces.
• Separate each tag with a space, not a comma.
• Example: a great sounding recipe for citrus marinaded beef might get tagged 'recipe beef orangejuice marinade yum 2008 4mom' (don't use the quotes). Did you notice how I entered 'orange juice?'
  
• It's up to you. Use as many or as few tags as you like.

Delicious is also a search engine. Go to the Delicious homepage and search for the word 'inspiration.' Are the results interesting? Inspiring? How is Delicious different from Google or Altavista?

More information for the curious

• Go to the Delicious homepage and experiment with using two-term searches (hint: you don't need to type 'and.')
  
• Check out "tag clouds"
  
• Add a "bookmark this on delicious" link to a post on your blog.
• Subscribe to a tag with your RSS reader so you can see every time that tag is used, or if you want to subscribe to a specific user, go to your "Networks" tab.
  
• Read the Wikipedia entry on Social Bookmarking
  
• Other services for social bookmarking: List on Wikipedia

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