Firstly, when I viewed Lorcan Dempsey's Weblog and saw the link to Ask Now's del.icio.us webpage, I thought, Brilliant - I'll have to include the link for when I return from holidays and am next logged in on an AskNow shift - the AskNow Cloud.
Investigating the SLNSW Del.icio.us site was also interesting to note the variable number of people that have also saved a particular site. For example, 4 other people have saved Doctor DaDa and 16 788 other people have saved LibraryThing. I must admit I prefer the look of the tag cloud to the traditional list and by rolling your mouse over the cloud tag, you're automatically alerted how many posts exist for that particular tag; however, I can see that some people may prefer the list view for pure alphabetical ease of finding the tag they're looking for. All in all, a brilliant idea to have the option to keep everybody happy!
I really like the look of the del.icio.us accounts - and when I first explored Sutherland's tag cloud, it demonstrated how dated our Weblinks looks in comparison. Our Weblinks was fantastic, great etc when it was first launched (several years ago now) and even whilst I was working in another library service, a couple of us had used the Weblinks for our university studies and thought it was great. Although our Weblinks still serves a fantastic purpose, I wonder how many users look at it and think ho-hum - imagine how much could be improved if it was to be transferred to del.icio.us - and for users who do like the traditional list - that option is still there!
Which brings me to Cleveland's tags - you're are greeted with the traditional list, click on the hyperlink and voila - a more sassy-looking del.icio.us account, complete with tag cloud.
Thus, I can see the use for such a tool in libraries - and Sutherland is just one library that has grasped these type of technologies and run with it - and of course, I was nodding my head whilst reading Lorcan's blog regarding AskNow service and lately have found whilst looking for websites to assist AskNow customers, have found some sites 'blocked' by the IT department which of course, makes it somewhat difficult to ascertain whether it will be useful for the customer. Mind you, I think some customers have also been unable to view some sites recommended by AskNow librarians (perhaps due to IT administrators etc).
I can also see the benefits of having access to 'Your Favourites', Bookmarks etc from any PC - how often in a work situation could you be away from your own PC etc - such a tool would be of benefit to many people.
Also, as the Social Bookmarking in Plain English video states, the collaborative benefits of social bookmarking saves many people time and effort in finding relevant websites - the example of Math teachers were used - we could quite easily transfer that to Librarians!
I'm now going to create my own Del.icio.us account....I've created my account, and having confirmed my email, I had a little exploration and saved some websites and added some tags and then to add my tag cloud to my blog, I did the following whilst logged in to Del.icio.us:
Click on Settings
Scroll down to Blogging
Click on tag rolls - this will display a cloud or list of your del.icio.us tags as part of your website - so I'm hoping that will be part of my blog.
Adjust your display options
Copy and paste the code
and this will be the test...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment