Thing #11: Tagging & Del.icio.us

I kind of like the concept of tagging. I tried it on a few of my posts. It certainly isn't very authoritative for a group of people to type any labels or keywords they want for tags, but I wonder if it could become authoritative if you had a large enough group and took the top 5 or 10 tags from that group. I could really see its usefulness in descriptions of book settings, plots and characters--and even color of the book--to find half-remembered titles that can't be located in a library catalog.

I think there are so many flaws in cataloging that tagging might, given a large enough contributor group, be as descriptive, if not more so, than cataloging using an authority file.

As for Del.icio.us, I don't think this holds my interest all that much.  I don't bookmark many sites so wouldn't use it for that feature.  However, in watching the video provided, I did begin to see some usefulness in using it for research topics.  It would almost be like creating a pathfinder to other web sites.

I looked at the Del.icio.us pages from various libraries, and I didn't find them useful or attractive at all. It looked to me like a page of ramblings. San Mateo Public Library has an interesting take on Del.icio.us, though: they've tagged web sites with a Dewey Decimal System number.

So thumbs up for tagging. The jury is still out on the usefulness of Del.icio.us. I don't have much use for it personally, but I can see its potential.  I'll think about this awhile and see if I want to try it out.