Our lesson this week has two parts:
Part 1: Social bookmarking and del.icio.usWatch this videoclip
Social bookmarking in plain English to introduce this week’s topic.
We’ll be looking more closely at web 2.0 applications that take advantage of tagging (we've already looked at several - Flickr, YouTube, Google video and blogs all use tags). Tagging allows you to associate keywords with online content - webpages, pictures, posts, etc. It is considered a
folksonomy or an unstructured categorization scheme.
Categorization scheme? As a library employee you know a thing or two about these – we use the largest categorization scheme on the planet, Library of Congress subject headings. Library of Congress, though, is
much more formalized and is considered a
taxonomy .
This week we’ll look at two applications that take great advantage of tagging –
Del.icio.us and
Library Thing.
Del.icio.us In addition to having an excellent name (yes, that’s a real URL – the .us at the end stands for United States),
Del.icio.us is a
social bookmarking site that lets you save bookmarks to a central location instead of your computer and classify them all with tags.
How is that social? Well, in addition to tagging your bookmarks, you can see how other users have tagged the same links and see related websites are important to them. This is an excellent way to find websites that may be of interest to you.
Del.icio.us even offers
RSS feeds - you can create a shared bookmark site (eg. for your team) and receive news every time a new link is added (eg. when one of your colleagues adds a new link).
Discover: Let's take a look at how a library is using Del.icio.us. See Sutherland Shire Libraries
tag cloud . And what about museums? The
Manchester Centre for Museology has a fairly extensive
list of tags .
Explore: We created a
Del.icio.us account for this exercise. Look at the tag list and see how it looks as a cloud. Contact slnsw2.0@gmail.com for the password then post some tags yourself.
[Hint: do not use commas between the tags.] Create a blog post about your experience and thoughts about using this tool in libraries.
Adventure: Using the
notes from Colorado State Library set up your own delicious account and put a link to it in your blog.
[Hint: it will still work even if you can’t download the toolbar icons]
Part 2: LibraryThingLibraryThing was developed by booklovers, for booklovers and its basic function is to quickly and painlessly create an online catalog of your personal book collection. What makes it even more special is its social networking component - once you've entered your books, you get to see everyone elses via book titles, authors, and the tags you assign to each entry. Look at the
Library Thing tour. Take a quick run through these seven or eight screens for an overview of key Library Thing features and functions.
This
link will take you to the SLNSW LibraryThing account set up for this exercise. If this takes you to the 'cover view,' look above the titles and click on 'list view.' From the 'list view,' look to the far right side of the screen - it shows you how many others have entered the title in question.
You can also add a widget to display titles that are in your catalogue or install a Library ThingSearch box on your blog or any other website you've set up (
instructions are here).
So why join the ranks and create your own library online? With more than 21 million books to date it’s already half the size of
Libraries Australia. Some libraries are adding
LibraryThing for libraries to their catalogues as a readers advisory tool. Try searching the Bedford Public Library
catalog for Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail and scroll down the catalog entry to see the tags.
Adventure:1. Create your own
LibraryThing account.
2. Add a least 5 books to your library.
3. Blog about your findings and be sure to include a link to your LibraryThing catalogue.
4. Already have a LibraryThing account and want to try something new? Give
Shelfari or
GuruLib a try instead.
Next up: Answer boards and social searching... (a shorter week next week!)
Another popular mashup tool is Google maps. Have a look at this example from the British Library called London: a life in Google maps. Voicethread is another type of mashup tool which could be really useful for adding information to our digital objects. Another example of combining Google Maps and historic maps is a mashup of César-François Cassini's 18th century map of France (the 182 sheets of the map took Cassini over thirty years to complete). Thanks to GeoGarage you can now view all 182 sheets on their Cassini Map. 
Another popular mashup tool is Google maps. Have a look at this example from the British Library called London: a life in Google maps. Voicethread is another type of mashup tool which could be really useful for adding information to our digital objects. Another example of combining Google Maps and historic maps is a mashup of César-François Cassini's 18th century map of France (the 182 sheets of the map took Cassini over thirty years to complete). Thanks to GeoGarage you can now view all 182 sheets on their Cassini Map. 
