Week 7: Tagging, folksonomies, delicious and LibraryThing

I created a del.icio.us account as well as one for LibraryThing. I had fun adding the items to both these lists and particularly being able to see how many other people have the same interests. My biggest problem was putting the links onto my Blog. This took considerable time, a lot of re reading of the instructions and trial and error.

I can see that LibraryThing could be used in libraries not only for Book Clubs but also for patrons to create lists of books they read and can give a rating. This would give both other patrons suggestions of items to borrow as well as library staff ideas for titles to suggest when asked to recommend books to read. A link could be included on the Library website for people to access it but perhaps a password or some control would be needed for items to be added.

I found Del.icio.us especially good. Like a personal "favourites" that can be accessed from any computer. Harping back to my genealogy I am often asked for Web addresses and have to email them from home. This way they are readily available. I also found it interesting after making my list of what I consider are the most useful genealogy sites which ones are the more popular. I plan to also add a list of reference books as this will be very useful when assisting people with family research. I can see that this would also be useful in a library situation particularly with the tags that are allocated as clients would be readily able to find information relevant to their query.