Bookmarks are useful tools to hold your place in a book your reading. Bookmarks are also useful tools to mark an interesting website you’ve found. Bookmarks are sometimes known as “Favourites”, depending on which browser you use to search with.
The free web-based social bookmarking site “del.icio.us” will be of interest to you if you use several different computers, and wish you could access the bookmarks you have at work, while you’re at home, or on your laptop while you’re using your desktop. Del.icio.us is also a great tool to organize your bookmarks, and as a discovery platform to find new websites of interest to you.
To get started, you’ll need to set up a free del.icio.us account. Once you have an account set up you can import bookmarks that you already have saved in your browser. Once uploaded, you can add “tags” – short, one or two word descriptions – to your bookmarks. The tags act like subject headings, and help to organize your bookmarks. You can add more than one tag to each bookmark. You can access your account from any computer with internet access.
Once you have some bookmarks saved in del.icio.us, you’ll be able to see if other users have bookmarked the same page. Then, you can click over to that person’s del.icio.us account to see what else they may have bookmarked on the same subject.
You can mark your bookmarks as “do not share” if you would prefer that others not be able to see them. You can also add a short description to your bookmarks, so you can easily remember why you saved a certain website.
Your Library has a del.icio.us account which lists website specially selected by our Reference Staff. You can see them at http://del.icio.us/TBPL
The uses for del.icio.us are endless. Here are some ideas from the site:
What can I use del.icio.us for?
del.icio.us is an open-ended system, so you decide how you want to use it. Here are examples of things you can do with saving bookmarks on del.icio.us:
Research - Writing an article? Researching an industry? Slaving away on your dissertation? Use del.icio.us to keep track of all the source materials and commentary that you find online.
Wishlist - Go to any commerce site, find what you like, save it to del.icio.us and tag it as wishlist. Then you can tell people to check out your wishlist bookmarks by giving them a link to http://del.icio.us/username/wishlist .
Podcast - Want to hear some great podcasts? Visit the mp3+podcast tag combination and start listening. Are you a podcaster? Start posting your mp3 files to del.icio.us and we will create an RSS feed for you.
Vacation - Planning a trip? Save links to hotels, activities, and transportation and use tags like "travel", "vacation", and "to-visit". Collaborate with friends and family by using the "for:username" tag.
Linklog - Save bookmarks to interesting websites and add a bit of commentary to create a lightweight linklog. Then, use linkrolls or the daily blog posting feature to include your del.icio.us bookmarks on your blog or website.
Cookbook - Whenever you find a great recipe on a website, save it to del.icio.us. Tag it with the recipe's ingredients or style of cooking, and then when you're wondering what to make for dinner, you can use your saved bookmarks to help you remember the perfect recipe.
Collaboration - Friends, coworkers, and other groups can use a shared account, special tag, or their del.icio.us networks to collect and organize bookmarks that are relevant -- and useful -- to the entire group.
Joanna Aegard, Head, Virtual Library Services
The "@ Your Library" Column appears in the Sunday edition of the Chronicle Journal newspaper. The Column is written by staff at the Thunder Bay Public Library. Library staff also write for other publications, and those columns will occasionally be posted here as well. This blog helps us share our writing with a broader audience, and provides our readers with a forum for feedback. We welcome your comments!
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