#8 del.icio.us and libraries

I did a search on del.icio.us using the tag libraries to see how libraries use social tagging and came across someone who is doing exactly that. I checked out a few public libraries' bookmarks and also looked at a few libraries' websites to see where they have placed the Delicious bookmarks on their websites.

Delicious is an easy way to organise long lists of sites and it was interesting to see what tags the different libraries used. Most had lists that covered all subject areas one could expect to come across when answering information queries.

As for where they place the Delicious bookmark on their website, it varied a lot. Many libraries didn't put the Delicious list on their websites at all (unless it is just that I couldn't find it on the website.) Perhaps the Delicious bookmark is on their Links bar on the reference desk computers and is not available for public. One such example is the San Mateo Public Library. They have their Delicious bookmark organised according to Dewey, which is useful to librarians who have a working knowledge of Dewey numbers, but it may not be useful to public. To make a Delicious bookmark for public tags or keywords would be more useful. Some had the link under the Reference section, which makes sense. Menasha public library had theirs linked from the home page under the reference section directly through to Delicious. The CSU-Pueblo library has a link through to their Delicious bookmarks from their blog's side bar. (Couldn't find a link to the library's website from the blog, and on the website couldn't find a link to the blog, although I used the site search engine.) On their webpage the link to Delicious is under Find, Web links.