Finally caving in to peer pressure and curiosity, I set up a del.icio.us account this week. For those of you not already light years ahead of me on web trends, deli.icio.us is a social bookmarking manager. It works very much like your web browser’s bookmark feature, except that you can access your links from any Internet connection and share them easily with others.
What makes del.icio.us particularly interesting is its reliance on amateur, non-hierarchical classification schemes. When you bookmark a site, you are prompted to hand tag your listing with subject keywords. Depending on your existing tag pool, del.icio.us may offer suggestions for relevant keywords, helping you to maintain consistency in your tagging by reenforcing your preexisting subject headings. Additionally, if your site has previously been bookmarked within the del.icio.us community, you will see a list of popular tags that have been applied by others. You can choose from these tags as well and thereby confirm and reenforce the community’s classification schemes.
It’s an LIS student’s dream. (Or nightmare, depending on how you look at it.) Whether del.icio.us proves to be a persistent information tool or little more than a trendy, web-based toy, it’s a fascinating experiment in grassroots information organizations. And look! New jargon! ==> Folksonomy. (Forgiving, for the moment, the weird, hybrid etymology of that word. Though given what it describes, perhaps it’s appropriate after all.)
The real puzzle is how to make this useful to you. If it were simply a matter of sharing favorite links with your friends, I don’t think it would have taken off. Why bother, when you could just email the link or slip a mention in your blog? No, what makes this particularly interesting is the ability to pick the brains of those interested in the same things you are. When I bookmark a site, I can find out all the other users who have also bookmarked it and then take a look at their lists. Maybe they have found related resources that I have missed. Maybe they are bookmarking fiends whose talents for finding the niftiest gems on the web far surpass mine. In that case I can subscribe to their bookmark lists and be notified every time they add something that might interest me.
It’s Vannevar Bush’s memex in action. Spiffy, eh?
Of course, you can also search for bookmarks marked by a particular tag. I’d warn you not to expect any of the precision of a true library catalog. There’s no real concept of authority control, and the tags consist of one word without standardized definition. One man’s “religion” is another man’s “humor.” Your “politics” may fall under my “horror.” Thus, I think you’d be better off trying the “like minds” approach mentioned above than floundering in subject searches. It may be hit or miss also, but it’s at least more voyeuristically satisfying.
If you do decide to peruse my bookmarks, you’re welcome to judge me a freak of dullness, but give me some time. I’m still figuring how I want to use it and just how much of a psychological profile I want to give to Those Who Are Always Watching.
