Social Bookmarking

My Delicious username: agpeders.

I have mixed feelings about Delicious and other social bookmarking sites. My mouse seems to naturally gravitate toward the Favorites tab to save my favorite sites, so it’s a bit of a hassle trying to get used to a new bookmarking tool. However, my Favorites tab on my Internet Explorer browser has gotten out of control. I have to scroll down to the very bottom to see sites I’ve added recently, and it’s more difficult than necessary to sort and go through all of the sites I have bookmarked over the past couple of years. This is why I really appreciate the ability to add tags to your bookmarks through Delicious and the option of adding notes to remind yourself why you bookmarked the site in the first place.

I decided to go through my Favorites on my browser and transfer the remaining relevant ones over to Delicious. Using tags, I was able to organize my bookmarks into two distinct categories: seniorthesis and wedding (putting a space between words creates multiple tags). Having the ability to access my bookmarked sites from a different computer is very useful in college. Over the years, it has been difficult going back and forth between my personal computer and those in the library. It’s kind of unfortunate that I didn’t discover this earlier…it would have saved me a lot of headaches while I was doing research papers.

It’s also unique that Delicious allows you to share your bookmarks with others. I have decided to keep all of my bookmarks private for the moment, simply because I’m not sure how relevant they are to anyone else at the moment. It’s nice to be able to have the option to edit your bookmarks so you can change the privacy level. Although I haven’t shared any of my bookmarks, Delicious also shows you usernames of others who have bookmarked the same site (and when they bookmarked it). This is useful to expand your network -- those with similar bookmarks may have similar interests.

I can also see this as a useful tool in the professional world when multiple employees are collaborating on a project. It may be beneficial to add these people to your Delicious network so you can share and bounce ideas off of one another.

Overall, Delicious is a useful tool that seems to offer a lot of opportunity, both academically and professionally (though I would argue it seems more useful in the realm of academics).