By Meredith Farkas
American Libraries Columnist
Distance learning librarian, Norwich University, Northfield, Vermont
librarysuccess@gmail.com
April 2008
Del.icio.us?
Social bookmarking your way to web guides
For library webmasters, keeping lists of online resources fresh can be a Sisyphean task. Websites disappear, new ones appear, and URLs change all the time. Most webmasters would love to let their colleagues update the web links themselves, but that isn’t possible in many libraries. Fortunately, with del.icio.us, if you can click a button and type, you can maintain links.
Del.icio.us is a social bookmarking site. Unlike browser bookmarks, where you assign websites to folders, del.icio.us enables you to assign multiple descriptive terms, or tags, to each website so they are more findable the next time you seek them. Instead of storing your bookmarks on your computer, they are accessible from the Web. Bookmarks in del.icio.us are public by default (but can be made private), meaning that you can browse other people’s favorites.
Let’s play tag
It’s easy to create bookmarks and organize them with del.icio.us. You simply click on a bookmarklet (a button installed on your browser toolbar), and assign tags and an optional description of the web page.
You can browse through your own bookmarks chronologically or by tag. You can also organize individual tags into topical bundles. The Dublin City Public Library in Ireland (del.icio.us/DublinCityPublicLibraries) has corralled its dozens of tags under topical headings to make it easier for people to find resources in their areas of interest.
Many libraries use del.icio.us internally to share links, but some are also starting to bookmark content useful to patrons. Some libraries are even replacing their traditional web guides with del.icio.us, or are integrating del.icio.us content into their existing subject guides.
Menasha (Wis.) Public Library (menashalibrary.org) has a link to its del.icio.us bookmarks on its front page under the title Recommended Websites. Patrons can then click on tags—organized in topical bundles—to find useful bookmarked resources. The University of Michigan Health Sciences Library linked to specific tags in its del.icio.us account to create a guide to Avian Influenza Resources (lib.umich.edu/hsl/guides/avianflu.html).
Del.icio.us has a tool called a link roll that allows you to display bookmarked content on your website, and to customize the bookmarks’ organization and appearance. The link roll lets you insert del.icio.us web links and annotations into existing subject guides without anyone knowing where they came from. Anytime new items are bookmarked in del.icio.us, they automatically show up in the appropriate guide.
The list of internet sites found in the Physics Subject Guide at Southern Connecticut State University (library.scsu.ctstateu.edu/physbib.htm) looks just like the rest of the guide. However, the titles, URLs, and annotations are pulled directly from del.icio.us. The same is true of the web resources in the Italian Studies guide at the College of New Jersey (tcnj.du/~library/moulaison/ItalianStudies.html), and its del.icio.us links are visually consistent with the rest of the site.
And cleanup’s a snap
Why stop with bookmarking websites? You can also put more traditional subject-guide content into del.icio.us. Databases can be bookmarked in del.icio.us with tags assigned based on the guides in which each database should appear. That way, if the URL of the database changes, you only have to edit the del.icio.us entry. If you can create permalinks to individual item records in your catalog, you could also bookmark cataloged items.
What’s best about del.icio.us is that it facilitates greater participation in subject-guide creation. Thanks to its low technology barriers and the fact that people at multiple computers can bookmark items to the same account, every library staff member can contribute to creating a useful guide for patrons.