Feb 18 2010
Crowdsourcing and Social Bookmarking Assignment
Overall, I found that Delicious was a great tool. With a Delicious account, I was more compelled to bookmark interesting sites than I ever have been with my computer. My computer’s bookmarking feature is constrictive and I follow a rule to only bookmark the most necessary websites such as our course blog. This rule is a result of how disorganized I am. I cannot remember my reasoning behind certain bookmarks. They quickly add up and become a confusing mess. However, the Delicious tag feature is excellent. I don’t hesitate to bookmark any interesting websites I find and they are labeled with terms that I understand. Additionally, it’s fun searching for sites on my various interests through other user’s tags. In the past, searching for valuable web sites has been time consuming for me. However, by searching Delicious’ tags, I receive a selection of great resources in minimal time. Someone else has done the work for me!
After completing this assignment, I do believe that crowdsourcing a specific topic using Delicious can be successful in a library. Searching various subjects of interest is addictive. However, there are some risks. Although tagging is highly effective and greatly assisted me, I believe that tagging may cause frustration for librarians. Delicious is an excellent tool to use for yourself. However, when a librarian uses Delicious, the account cannot solely function to fit their preferences. Therefore, the librarian is confronted with the challenge of determining the appropriate tags for each site. I encountered this issue even when tagging my ten bookmarks for this assignment. Besides the tag, “LIS9763”, I wanted to use the tag, “library.” However, I started to wonder, should I change “library” to “libraries” or even to “librarians”? Which term is most popular? This creates a problem with the success of the results in a user’s search. When a user searches among tagged items, there is a great possibility that relevant information is available under different tags than the ones they are entering within the search function. Therefore, librarians have the complicated task of determining all of the relevant subjects of their bookmarked site to include them as tags.
Another issue that might deter users from reading excellent information is the number of times a site has been tagged. If a user has a choice between a site with one hundred tags and a site with fifteen tags, they are likely to only read the more popular site. While completing this assignment, I chose a blog post titled, “Humanizing your Facebook Pages” by David Lee King. I discovered that this post only had ten tags which initially made me feel unsure of my choice. However, when I reread the article I found it highly relevant to our course and offering unique information to librarians. A site with fewer tags does not insinuate that it is useless. If librarians are offering information in this format, I believe that they need to find a method to encourage users to view all sites of interest, no matter how large the tag number.
3 responses so far
3 Responses to “Crowdsourcing and Social Bookmarking Assignment”
Glad you liked my blog post (even though it was only tagged 10 times)
And I agree – the amount of tagging and the amount of usefulness don’t always coincide.
I find using a lot of related terms best with “Social Bookmarks” so as not to miss an access term. However, the problem with being thorough is that it makes the process of bookmarking mechanical and slows down the process. What did you find most surprising with delicious?
Thanks for your input David!
Arvind, I completely agree. The more terms the better when social bookmarking as a librarian. But, it must take a lot of the fun out of it. The most surprising thing I found in Delicious was how quickly I got addicted to searching topics of interest to see what articles other users have bookmarked. I feel like I spent much more time using Delicious than I ever have using Google.