Tuesday, March 30, 2010

CPL 2.0 Delicious and organizing information

Well, I can see the advantage of using Delicious over "favorites" in folders -- the ability to see them from any computer. I used to attempt to set up folders of sites at the Info Desk when I was at Shawnessy, but in those days we had "thin clients" not PCs at the desk and almost every time you logged on you got a different server and your favorites were missing or incomplete.

The tag bundles are helpful, but without the use of a controlled vocabulary, tags can be applied very inconsistently, especially if more than one person is adding the tags for sites in each broad subject area. (Yeah for LCSH!!!!) I think the subject departments are doing a good job of organizing their most useful sites. I do like the ability to add comments, especially to refer users to Central's print resources.

I cringe when I see the alphabetical list of sites displays within a tag, with things filed under initial articles like "a", "an" and "the."

I also find searching for tags a bit cumbersome, if you don't find anything, it takes a while to clear your search in order to do another one.

I'm not on the desk a lot, so I haven't used Delicious too much. It's not great for kids, and yet the thought of staff having to maintain a kids link library again is quite daunting. We could use something, however, for children's literature sites, especially since more and more information is going online.

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