[Web4lib] del.icio.us tags and bookmarking sites -- WHY DO IT?

[Ross Singer]

Bill, I think you're missing the point.  The tags are there as an 
organization tool for the user.  The fact that resources also can be 
aggregated together based on the tag is a bonus.

Therefore, imagine you added folksonomic tagging to your opac.  As 
people save records into their "bookbag" or whatever (or let's say you 
add a folksonomy based citation management system).  Another user 
searching your opac can then see the terms that have been left behind by 
other users (in their effort to find this item again), but the 
assumption is that this is probably a /useful/ descriptive term that 
could be used to find, say, /articles/ with this same (or combination 
of) term(s) if you were to link out of the opac to connotea.  It expands 
the notion of discovery to user-aggregated resources.

-Ross.

Drew, Bill wrote:

> But if the major search engines are not doing tagging or adding such 
> things to their databases, what is the current value to the typical 
> user that is probably not aware of tagging?  I can see it as something 
> librarians need to keep an eye on as an up and coming technology but 
> is it worthwhile instructing our users about it?  Will Furl or 
> something like it replace Google?  I don't think so.
>  
> Bill Drew
> drewwe at morrisville.edu <mailto:drewwe at morrisville.edu>
>
>     ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>     *From:* John W. Chapman [mailto:johnwchapman at gmail.com]
>     *Sent:* Monday, May 23, 2005 10:53 AM
>     *To:* Drew, Bill
>     *Cc:* web4lib at webjunction.org
>     *Subject:* Re: [Web4lib] del.icio.us tags and bookmarking sites --
>     WHY DO IT?
>
>     The main benefit I derive from the del.icio.us
>     <http://del.icio.us> site is by seeing who else has linked to the
>     articles I have, and then looking to see what other sites they
>     have found that I might have missed. In addition, the level of
>     linking to particular resources, especially when observed over
>     time, can provide clues as to the currency or hype around a
>     particular trend. This is particularly true when looking for
>     information on the type of resources that users of the service
>     skew towards - web development, graphic design, tech gadgetry, etc.
>
>     Saying that, I find it useful, but not crucial - a once-a-week
>     type of service, not a daily one. 
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
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