Module 2 - Delicious

If you wish to use this task as one of your three (3) OLJ tasks for Assignment 3, you will need to write a short evaluation (no more than 350 words) of your use of Delicious as a social bookmarking tool - include a critical evaluation of the effectiveness of different features and/or functions, as well as a brief statement on the different ways an information organisation may be able to utilise Delicious to support information services, learning and/or collaboration of users and/or employees.

Use of Delicious as a social bookmarking tool:

Creating a Delicious account was a relatively simple process, as was adding links, tags and following.   I used Delicious to bookmark and tag all of my online citations for Assignment 3, which was a real timesaver. It could even save links to the full text of articles which I accessed through subscription databases – very impressive. I really enjoy the freedom of folksonomy based tagging and searching, though I will need to add more links to know if my tagging is effective and to bundle my links together. Delicious has many advantages over traditional bookmarking of websites, and I can see the advantages of using it in my workplace. However in some ways, using Delicious has had its disappointments too.

Effectiveness of Different Features and Functions:

The initial interface of Delicious was not as user friendly as I had hoped, and there was initially a glitch with following, both of which put me off using it for a while. The new interface is simpler and more intuitive to use but there seems to be a problem with the Sign Out option. It does not close the window and appears not to work on screen, which is annoying. The search engine feature is interesting and may prove a useful way to find information on a topic. I am yet to find a use for some of the features however, being able to add a linkroll to a website, and links and codes to blogs would seem to be useful tools that could be applied at my workplace.

Ways that an Information Organisation can use Delicious:

An information organisation could use Delicious to support information services by the creation of bookmarks on frequently asked questions which could be accessed by both staff and customers. For example – Delicious could be used to provide links to websites which have information for student assignments, to provide links to information about your local area, or to provide how-to information like pathfinders for family history. There are some great examples of this on Angela’s Melange blog 2007) and in Mackay’s (2012) article. As a learning or collaboration tool, Delicious could be used by librarians as an internal tool to bookmark professional topics of interest which can then be easily shared.

References:

Mackay, A. (2012). Learning 2.0 Module Archive: Delicious. Retrieved from: http://thehyperlinkedlibrary.org/learning20/2012/05/02/delicious/

Angela (2007). Del.icio.us libraries. Retrieved from: http://angelacw.wordpress.com/2007/06/04/delicious-libraries/