Thing 13 - del.icio.us, tagging, folksonomies

I have mixed feelings about del.icio.us -- mostly because I'm leary about social networking in general. The idea of someone trawling through my bookmarks creeps me out. I'm so protective of my personal information, and I'm not convinced that someone wouldn't put two and two together to find the person behind the screen name. It's the TMI/stalking factor that bothers me--and it's not like I even have anything to hide(!).


I have no problem at all with folksonomies. I think free-form tagging is liberating, albeit chaotic. I love Dewey as much as the next librarian, but there's something serendipidous about finding new avenues of interest through common tags. And I like the cloud list feature.

I took a class on del.icio.us and made the mistake of importing the entire collection of favorite bookmarks for the Toms River Library Reference Computers, winding up with 634 items right from the get-go. I never went back to organize the links, and I think if I ever go back to the account, I'll delete them all and start from scratch.

Portable bookmarks rock. Back in the day, I used to use something called "Blink," which functioned similarly. I can see vast potential of del.icio.us for personal and professional use, particularly in the creation of shared reading lists. I just have to work out the details.