The delicious website allows individuals to create their own personal web based favourites list by copying the URL for a website or a specific webpage that they are interested in and pasting the link into their delicious account. These webpages could be any that have a fixed address such as the TasTAFE library homepage or the start point for searching for SCA heraldic devices (personal emblems).
People can use bookmarks to label their entries with their own set of keywords. When other users create a link to a specific webpage in their account then that person can add their own tags or copy the tags that the first person used.
They can then use the keywords to search for related websites both within their own set of saved bookmarks and those created by other users. This means that a search will yield results of greater relevance to the person.
Out of all the applications that the class looked at last year this is one that I still use on a regular basis as it is were I put links to sites that may be useful in the future so I can find them when I need them. Having now discovered the search ability, When I have some free time I will being greatly expanding the list of webpages I have saved.
Delicious would be of use to libraries as it could be used to record the location of websites that clients have found useful in the past. This would enable the staff to locate the resource quickly the next time that it is requested. The ability to search the websites that others have saved means that searches are not restricted to the sites that the library already knows about and helps find other websites with an appropriate level of authority.
With time the library's database of useful websites would grow providing a useful starting point when looking for authoritative resources and may remove the need to search the web as a whole when looking for resources. The list of tags being applied to the websites listed would be useful to indicate what keywords people tend to use so these could be considered for use in the library catalogue.
Ok, Simon, some interesting comments
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