Using tags for Reference

Using web-based tags has made organizing websites I like SO much easier! I've been using Delicious, but there are a number of other tagging sites available. Here's a fun video on how tagging - also known as social bookmarking - works:



Nan and I have been discussing creating a Delicious account for Reference, where we can all access a number of bookmarks that might be useful. Currently there are many bookmarks saved in Internet Explorer and Mozilla on the Reference computer, but as the video points out, these bookmarks are only available on THAT computer. Tagging them with a service like Delicious makes them accessible from anywhere. There are further uses for these bookmarks as well, like incorporating links to them in Research Guides or other places on our website.

The main drawback to social bookmarking is that your bookmarks are saved elsewhere, so you are dependent on that service for retrieving them. In January of this year, tagging site Ma.gnolia lost all of its users data. Oops.

Technorati is the other most popular tagging site. According to Wikipedia, Faves "has a wider range of functionality that encourages interaction with 'friends' in rating the content of linked webpages." This might be more group friendly and worth considering for something like Reference tags.

Diigo allows you to also highlight parts of a webpage and attach sticky notes! I'm going to have to try this one out.

Leave comments and let me know if you prefer a particular service or have other thoughts on creating common tags for Reference-related websites. Oh, and the other great thing is we can assign as many tags as we want to a site. So if I would call something "instruction" and Nan would call it "infolit", we give the site both tags and then can both access it intuitively. No more need to be mindreaders!