Using del.icio.us in AskAway

Part of the AskAway Best Practices sessionNovember 16, 2006

Joy SchwarzWinnefox Library Systemschwarz@winnefox.org

First of all… what is del.icio.us?• It’s a web site at http://del.icio.us

• It’s pronounced just like the word delicious

• The del.icio.us domain name is a “domain hack” using the .us domain to form a word. It uses the same top-level domain a lot of libraries use, like http://www.hustisford.lib.wi.us

• It’s a social bookmarking web service for storing, sharing, and discovering web bookmarks

• It’s free to use

• It’s been around since 2003 & was bought by Yahoo about a year ago

• It’s part of the Web 2.0 movement -- emphasizing online collaboration and sharing among users

• Think of it as bookmarks on steroids

What makes it so special?• It allows us to collaborate so we may contribute to a set of

shared bookmarks

• Users tag each of their bookmarks with multiple freely-chosen keywords; this is also called folksonomy. These are not Sears or Library of Congress subject headings.

• You can see a combined view of everyone's bookmarks that use a tag. For example the URL http://del.icio.us/popular/photography shows all the pages del.icio.us users have tagged "photography".

• RSS newsfeeds are available for both bookmarks and tags.You can subscribe to these newsfeeds in your newsfeed aggregator, like Bloglines www.Bloglines.com

So what does this have to do with AskAway?Why am I telling you about it?

Like you…

• When I monitor chat, I want to have good resources handy so I can quickly find the answer for a patron

• I turn to the Librarians Index to the Internet for librarian-selected resources on topics, but I don’t always find what I’m looking for there

• My reference skills aren’t as strong as I’d like in some subject areas, so I’ve been working to build up some good bookmarks for myself

So…

• I’ve been moving my bookmarks out of my web browser into del.icio.us so I have a toolbox handy just for when I monitor chat

• I named the set of bookmarks http://del.icio.us/askawaywisc

• And then I thought, what if everyone in the consortium wanted to share?

• We could all benefit!

What I’m proposing

Everyone in the AskAway Consortium has access to add items to the http://del.icio.us/askawaywisc bookmarks

Here’s how you can participate – the basics:

• Go to http://del.icio.us in your web browser• Log in with

username: askawaywisc password: forward

Add a bookmark:• It’s easiest to use buttons you’ve added to your web browser• It’s also easy to use the bookmarklet added to your toolbar• Find info on installing either of these at http://del.icio.us/help/saving

Tag the item:• Use a single word• If you want to use multiple words, combine them with a + sign• As an additional tag, add your initials.

It’s OK to stay logged in to del.icio.us all the time; that way you can easily use the buttons to bookmark web pages to del.icio.us as you see them.

In conclusion…

• If you’re not interested in participating right now, consider using Bloglines or other newsfeed aggregator to subscribe to its RSS feed: http://del.icio.us/rss/askawaywisc

• So, the bookmarks are there for you if you’d like to use them!

• I look forward to seeing new bookmarks appear there.