Tagging is an open and informal method of categorizing that allows users to associate keywords with online content such as webpages, pictures and posts.
Tagging content makes it easier for you and others to retrieve. You can add as many tags as you like which makes it easy to describe items that cover many different concepts. And, unlike library subject cataloging, which follows a strict set of guidelines (i.e. Library of Congress subject headings), tagging is completely unstructured and freeform, allowing users to create connections between data anyway they want. You should, however, maintain consistency so your tagged items display together. For instance, if you tag one item “Brevard County”, but tag the next item “Brevard”, they won’t appear together!
Tags are descriptive words or phrases used to describe the subject, location, name, category, people, places, date, ideas -- anything you can think of! Tagging is designed to be both personal (you choose which tags you want to use) and collaborative (others can see the tags you've assigned).
Even if you don’t know the term “tagging”, you should be familiar with the concept.
We have been using tags as labels in the 23 Things blog to identify and link to the individual Things in our program:
Users can add tags to records in our LS2 PAC catalog. This title, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows, has been tagged as “Harry Potter 7” – helpful for unfamiliar with the correct order of the titles!
Social Bookmarking
Say you are surfing the web at home and find a website you really like. You add it to “My Favorites” so you don't have to look it up again. Now let's say you're at work and you want to go back to that site. You remember that you bookmarked it in “My Favorites”, but that was on your home PC not at work. This is where Social Bookmarking steps in.
Social Bookmarking allows you to save your all your favorite websites online, share them with others, and even see what sites other people bookmarked. And, you can “tag” bookmarks with relevant keywords to help you (and others) to retrieve them easily.
For more information, view Commoncraft’s “Social Bookmarking in Plain English” video, featuring Delicious, here.
Delicious
Delicious (formerly del.icio.us) is a social bookmarking site that lets you save bookmarks to a central location (no more copying them to multiple browsers on multiple computers) and classify them all with tags.
In addition to tagging your bookmarks, you get to see how other users have tagged the same links and see related websites are important to them. This is an excellent way to find websites that may be of interest to you.
Delicious and Libraries
View some Library Delicious tag collections:
Menasha Public Library
San Mateo Public Library
La Grange Park Public Library
TheInternetPublicLibrary
Maui Community College Library
Other Social Bookmarking Sites
Delicious is not the only social bookmarking site. Other social bookmarking sites include: Diigo and Spurl.net. Sites such as Digg, reddit, and Newsvine offer a similar system for organization of social news.
Thing #9 Activity: Explore Delicious
Step-by-Step Instructions:
1. Explore Delicious. Try clicking on a bookmark that has also been bookmarked by a lot of other users. Look at comments about the bookmark or the tags that they used to categorize it.
2. Spend a few minutes thinking about this 23Things blog. If you had to assign tags to it, what tags would you use?
3. On your blog, add a blog post about your experience and thoughts about this tool. Consider these blog prompts: Can you see the potential of this tool for research assistance? Would it be an easy way to share bookmarks with groups of people such as book groups? Or just an easy way to create bookmarks that can be accessed from anywhere? How can a library use tagging and delicious? NOTE: Remember to tag your post "Thing #9".
Optional Additional Resources:
If you would like create your own Delicious account, see Delicious: Getting Started.
For more in-depth information, see “How to Use Delicious: The King of Social Bookmarking” from Social Media Examiner and this entry on howstuffworks.com.
For more about using Delicious in libraries, read the September 2007 Library Journal article: "Tags Help Make Libraries Del.icio.us". You can also view a Delicious tutorial on YouTube.
UPDATES:
On December 16, 2010: Stephen Abrams (remember him?) blogged that delicious was going to be discontinued. Read his blog post here. AP posted an article detailing the reasons here.
On December 17, 2010: he had another post saying that Yahoo! was looking for an "exit strategy". He also included tips for alternatives, exporting bookmarks from delicious and more. Read that post here.
Here's a link to alternatives to delicious.
March 2011: The Swiss Army Librarian wrote about his experimentation with diigo as a possible replacement for delicious.
April 2011: Yahoo announces a new owner for delicious and provides a link to Move Your Bookmarks.
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