Thing 12: Social Bookmarking (Week of 3/2)

This week's topic is Social Bookmarking.

Social bookmarking allows Internet users to save web addresses to an account where they can organize, search, and share their bookmarks. This is different than just saving it to Favorites because it is accessible on any computer with any Internet browser. Users can tag bookmarks with descriptive words to help themselves and others find the web addresses. Some of the social bookmarking sites even recommend other sites people have bookmarked based on the web addresses and tags in your account. You can see how many times a tag has been used and look at all of the bookmarks to which that tag has been assigned to. Watch this video for a visual explanation:

Social Bookmarking in Plain English


Social bookmarking has been around for over 10 years, but didn't gain much popularity until del.icio.us popped up. Del.icio.us was the first site that allowed users to tag their web addresses. You may have heard of some of these other social bookmarking sites: Digg, Diigo, Furl, Ma.gnolia, Newsvine, Reddit, and StumbleUpon. Most of these sites allow you to make the bookmarks public or private. When they are made public, other users can see who created the bookmark. This can help your network of online friends grow. They may have bookmarks that would interest you. For this week's exercise, we'll use del.icio.us.

This Week's TechPlay Exercise : del.icio.us

1. Go to www.delicious.com
   
2. Click the green box in the top, right hand corner labeled "Join Now."
3. Fill out all of the boxes. For username and passwords, you may want to try using the same ones as you have used for previous logins.
4. When you get to the next screen, click "Skip Step 2".
5. Skip the next screen as well so click "Skip Step 3".
6. Enter a web address (also known as a URL) in the box you wish to add to your saved bookmarks. If you can't thing of any to add, use www.lagrangelibrary.org, www.mls.lib.il.us (MLS), or www.loc.gov (Library of Congress). Click "Next".
7. Now you can add more information. You can make notes that you may want to remember about what on that particular website is useful to you. You can also add tags (remember those from Thing 11?). The tags will help you search for the bookmark. For www.mls.lib.il.us, you could add MLS, libraries, SWAN, meetings, workshops.
8. You can make the bookmark unsearchable by other users by checking the box "Do Not Share". You can also leave it searchable to help out other users.
9. Click "Save".
10. Note that at the bottom of the screen, you can add these bookmarks into your RSS Feeds!
11. You can keep adding bookmarks as you find new websites worth remembering!
12. Blog about social bookmarking. How do you feel about others being able to see what you've bookmarked? Do you have concerns about privacy issues?
    

Challenge 1:

Try using the network feature. Find a coworker who has done the previous exercise. Trade usernames with them and add the username to your network. You will be able to share bookmarks. You could use this when planning a family vacation. Bookmark a bunch of websites for ideas on where to go, share the bookmarks with family, and then everyone will have an easy way to access the list. You can also add notes like which time of year it is best to visit each location.

Challenge 2:

If you have websites already bookmarked at home or on a specific computer that you want to add to Del.icio.us, under settings in Del.icio.us learn how to import them. Now you'll be able to log into you Del.icio.us account and view your favorite websites no matter which computer or internet browser you're using.

Thing 11: Tagging (Week of 2/23)

This week's topic is Tagging.

You may have heard of a tag before... and not the kind you look at when you're shopping. A tag in the Web 2.0 world is a description attached to a piece of information. Librarians have been tagging pieces of information for years. We call them subject headings. Assigning a tag to a piece of digital information is just like assigning a subject heading to a book. There are two big differences between a librarian assigning a subject heading and a person assigning a tag. The first is that there are no rules for tagging to follow like the Library of Congress Subject Headings. You can tag whatever word you think is the most appropriate for the information. It may be the date and place a picture was taken or it may be keywords to describe the plot of a book. The second difference is that anyone can tag. You usually just have to log into an account whereas library catalogs do not allow patrons to add subject headings.

You've probably seen tags before. Amazon.com was one of the first websites to use tagging. Why pay someone to add descriptions when the users can add keywords and enjoy doing it? Last week you looked at pictures in Flickr. Users of Flickr will tag their pictures so other users can find them. This is how you are able to search for the term "flower". Flickr searches the tags of the pictures to find the ones using "flower" to provide search results.

Hopefully you have all had a chance to try Encore, SWAN's new catalog. You can tag in Encore which allows other users to see your descriptions. It provides more information on materials and gives patrons a collaborative environment to do it in. Have fun checking it out in this week's exercise!

This Week's TechPlay Exercise: You'll need your library card number and your pin. Your pin is the same as it was in the old catalog. If this is your first time signing into your account online, it will ask you to create a pin.

1. First, go to http://swanencore.mls.lib.il.us/iii/encore/app
2. Click "Login" in the upper-right hand corner. Use your library card number and pin to login.
3. After you are logged in, you will be automatically returned to the search page. In the upper-right hand corner, it will say "Welcome, Doe, Jane M."
4. Search for any book or other material that you have already read/enjoyed.
5. Click on the title you have selected to tag.
6. Towards the bottom under Community Tags will be a box labeled "Add a Tag".
7. Type in your tag and click "Submit".
8. Your tag should appear under "Community Tags" and "My Tags". You can delete your tag by clicking the red "x" next to the tag if you have made a spelling error or simply wish to delete it.
9. Blog about your experience. Do you think this is something you will use? Where else have you seen tagging used?

Challenge: Have you noticed when you are composing one of your blog entries the area "Labels for this post"? Blogger is simply calling tags Labels. If you've added any information in there before, then you have tagged. Try tagging your blog for Thing 11, this will make it searchable for others to find.