Libraries 2.0 week 7: social bookmarking

For this week's assignment, we toured around del.icio.us. (Sorry, I forgot to check for a background on the name peculiarities.)

I would like to pass a word of advice on to anyone planning to create a del.icio.us account: do it BEFORE you start exploring del.icio.us. I explored first and then created an account. While exploring I found a few links to add to my account. Since my account didn't exist, the links are lost for the ages. Anyway, food for thought.

During week 6, I had a conversation with a fellow blogger on his blog about privacy issues. He and I were concerned about privacy and security issues with having personal information accumulated online. This takes it one step further. I'm actually broadcasting information to any and all who chose to listen. I have to admit, there was a bookmark of mine that I chose not add for fear it would come back to haunt me in my quest for the presidency. (A shiny new doughnut to the first person to guess the link!) There were other links I didn't add, but this was the only one I didn't add out of fear.



A benefit of this is that you can access your bookmarks from anywhere. Another benefit is, as opposed to search engines, the sites you find on others' accounts have been at least mildly endorsed. You don't have that bonus on search engines.



For the average person, social bookmarking looks like a few more steps to find your favorite web sites.

For the non-average person (read: researcher), it looks like a great way to build up an online resource list. And searching that list is easier and faster because you have the tags you can click and have it search for you.

And have a good day.