Tagging, Folksonomy, Delicious

Here is the link to my Delicious stacks lenorapoulin.
 
I had signed up for Delicious some time last year and spent quite a bit of time setting up links, etc.  I found I preferred my bookmarks bar as it was inconvenient to go to the Delicous site for my lists.  Since their redesign I cannot find my "stuff" on Delicious so I had to re-sign up.  This wasn't really a problem as honestly, I don't even remember what I had bookmarked last year.

I like the new format of the site.  The stacks remind me of the pin boards on Pinterest - my favourite bookmarking site.  I was also able to add a Delicious gadget to my iGoogle home page which will hopefully make access easier, and me more likely to use this tool.

I created stacks for Library, Scrapbooking, My Blogs, Teacher "stuff", and Web 2.0 and then added the links that I currently have on my blogs and bookmarks toolbar.  One thing I was having difficulty with was the image associated with the site.  Even when I selected "no image" an image would appear, sometimes one that was really too big and not identifying of the site.

The tags exercise was interesting.  I could see many of the issues mentioned in the Folksonomy article.  When linking some libraries suggested tags included catalogue, catalogues, cataloging... etc.  How do I know which is the most popular search term?  Obviously I don't really "care" that much about searching through my bookmarks, but when considering cataloging resources for staff and students, this is important.  These tag "clouds" are becoming our online library catalogues and so we need to have some vocabulary standards.

I didn't spend much time searching for other links for my stacks but I can see how this could become quite addictive.  I am trying, through Google reader, to subscribe to the sites I visit most and then receive notification when there is a new post or update.  I find this to be much more efficient than visiting a site that hasn't been updated for some time.

UPDATE:  Since writing this post (February 19th), I have become a huge fan of tags and am working on tagging previous blog posts and other online content that I follow.  I have added the Tag Cloud to my learning blogs so that I can find content easier and in my Google Reader RSS feed I use tags to sort and search for web content to follow.

Through this learning process I have become a better cataloger of my library materials.  I find that I can think about who might be searching for that material, and what kind of search terms they might use.  I am also trying to encourage my students, when they are doing their blog posts in class, to tag their posts.  I tell them it is like creating a filing system for their Web 2.0 material.  It might not seem important now, but when they continue their education or have a career, they will be thankful for this skill.