Del.icio.us Thing 13

I like del.icio.us in theory, but in order to use it, you have to install software onto the computer you use to browse the internet. I'm hesitant to put the links I would find of personal use onto the staff computers at the library. On the other hand, we already have a sort of "most used links" page with the BCPL.info website, in the section called "of use to librarians" or some such, but it doesn't use tags.

The kinds of links I'd put on my home computer would be a lot different from the ones I'd feel comfortable putting on the library's computers. Why would my coworkers need to access cheat codes for Mac OS X's version of Civilization IV or read Cornelius93's Thelemic exegesis?

I didn't really understand the coolness of del.icio.us (which, by the way, I do not find a *cute* way of spelling delicious, nor funny, I think it's mostly obnoxious) at first. I did a search for "Archaeology", a topic I'm relatively competent in, and it came up with 11,405 hits. I'm unclear as to how they sort the results (is it alphabetically by site name?), unlike Google they don't sort them by number of other pages linking that site to the search term. But then, when I did a more specific search for "aegean archaeology" it came up with 28 hits. I realized it was searching the tags themselves.

::light comes on::

OH, I understand why this is useful. I especially liked their "clouds" giving numbers of people who also think this site is useful. I think this tool with minimize librarians' searching time for obscure reference questions, and will also expedite student research time by minimizing scrolling thru search windows.

Awesome.

My name on Del.icio.us is Bastian_Balthasar_Bux. If you can name the literary reference of that name, I will rejoice and sacrifice to you.