Thing 17 – Learn about tagging and discover Del.icio.us (a social bookmarking site).

I have been using Del.icio.us since 2006. Infowidget’s Del.icio.us account
It’s where I first learned the term tagging. It is an easy way to keep track of bookmarks as opposed to just keeping them on my computer. Whenever I read a book and it has a number of interesting links in its bibliography, I add them to my del.icio.us account. It is a very useful resource.

I heard that Heights Library had a del.icio.us account before and I know that some libraries use this as a link list and other people can add to the list. The social aspects of it are very cool too. I can tag links as for_$FRIEND and vice versa. If someone likes links and passes them my way, I find something that I may not have seen. I can even subscribe to a RSS feed of other people’s bookmarks.

I have used del.icio.us as a search engine a few times. When researching something obscure for a patron, sometimes I find that someone out there has created a bookmark to a page that I can’t find on Google or other popular search engines.

Definitely useful!