Library Day in the Life/Week in the Life

 

Most of my days are spent at the keyboard...

I have not had much time this week to blog each day about what I have been doing (and I’m not sure it would make entertaining reading if I did!).  So I thought why not chuck it all into one post?  That would work wouldn’t it?  Let’s find out…

 

Most of my working week this week has involved doing a bit of a spring clean through our e-journals.  This means checking through what our e-library says we hold and matching that up with what our subscription actually gives us access to.  Sometimes I stumble across journals that we have access to that have not been activated, sometimes I find the reverse.  Whilst it is a laborious job, it is one I volunteered to do as I wanted to make sure that what we say students have access to is actually what they have access to.  If this information is not accurate it can lead to frustration amongst students, which has its own obvious consequences (the dreaded ‘G’ word).

Alongside a bit of spring cleaning, I have also spent most of the week dealing with student enquiries.  This normally involves fixing up their e-library access or helping them find the resources they require.  As I used to work in a more customer facing role than my current position, I do like being able to maintain contact with ‘customers’.  Being in an office all day can leave you feeling a bit disconnected from the student experience, but the odd query every now and then certainly helps to maintain a certain connection.

Of course, Wednesday was the big day…the day of the first Voices for the Library meeting.  It was an exciting day, finally getting to meet a bunch of people I admire greatly.  But more importantly, we achieved a lot.  It was without doubt one of the most productive meetings I have ever attended.  Maybe that is what is missing from most meetings…if it was a bunch of strangers thrown together it might make for more productive discussion.  Who knows?  Anyway, stuff was decided and agreed and then it was off to the pub. Nice

In terms of my work for Voices this week, my main focus has been on preparing stuff for next week (although I’m not going to reveal what that’s all about!).  As the man behind the Facebook Page, I have been putting some final touches to something that I hope will look impressive when it is on public show.  Damn, it’s hard not blurting out what I am referring too!  Well, hopefully it looks good!

I’m also trying to look at other ways to improve the users’ experience of our web 2.0 presence.  I am really keen to make the most of our Twitter and Facebook Pages and make them interesting portals to what we are doing on our site and beyond.  I have been experimenting with using Facebook Notes to produce a short summary of what we have posted on our site and what has been in the news library-wise.  I don’t think it is something I can commit to every day, but I like the fact that it may reach people who haven’t picked up on things during the day due to lack of access to our web 2.0 access points.  It provides a nice little summary and also points people back to our site.  Not only that, but it also reaches people who aren’t on Facebook as Notes can be read by anyone (and they  have an RSS feed – a rarity for something as ‘closed’ as Facebook).  Like I said, I’m always trying to think of new ways to get our Facebook Page out there a little more.  I’d love to hear from anyone who has any suggestions of useful applications that may be worth exploring.

As well as my job and my VftL work, I have also been looking closely at what my local council (Kent) is doing in terms of libraries.  There has already been talk of closing libraries or establishing ‘community’ libraries (an Orwellian concept if ever there was one).  Who knows where this will lead but worrying times indeed as the public library issue finds its way a little closer to home.  Let’s hope Kent tries something imaginative, rather than going for the slash n’ burn approach.  We’ll see.

Flavors.me – A Portal to Your Social Networks

One of the problems with having so many social networking accounts is that you have your footprint all over the place making it difficult for you to conveniently share all your networks.  Sure, you can find people via the normal ‘Find your Friends’ applications and links on their blogs, but it would be handy to just have a one-stop homepage where you can sure all your profiles.  Not only would this be good for sharing your profiles, it would be great if you could aggregate all your stuff onto one page.  If you want to integrate your stuff in this way, quickly and easily, then Flavors.me may be for you.

Flavors.me - A Personal Homepage

Of course, this isn’t a new idea.   There are a few other sites out there that do exactly the same thing.  But Flavors is the best one I have seen so far.  Once you have signed up for an account, you have the opportunity to incorporate a number of social networks on your homepage (up to 4 for a free account and as many as you like for a paid account), including:

• Twitter
• Last.fm
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• WordPress
• Flickr
• YouTube

And loads more (around 18 at the moment with more to come according to the developers – including LibraryThing!).  You then have the opportunity to edit the name of the subsequent hyperlink to your social network.  For example, you can change ‘Flickr’ to ‘Look at my photos’…handy if people visiting your site aren’t aware of what Flickr is (there are people out there, believe it or not, who aren’t addicted to social networking….).  Once added, visitors can click on the relevant link and the content you have decided to share will be displayed directly on your Flavors.me page, rather than opening the relevant profile in a new window.

My Flavors.me Homepage

Once you have added your networks you can also fill in a bit of detail about yourself to be displayed on your page and adjust font styles, sizes and backgrounds.  When finished you have a very simple, clean portal to all of your social networks….and at no cost!  That’s got to be a good thing.  There is also a paid account ($20 per year) which gives you more design options, more data sources, custom domains and stats.  At present I only have the free account but I am quite tempted to upgrade to the full version at some point in the future.  If you’re looking to have a single portal for all your social networks, it is certainly worth giving it a look.

Marketing Libraries

One of the good things about the course I am taking is that you (eventually!) have the option to break away from the mandatory modules and choose one of the many option modules that are available.  The two modules I went for are Digital Information (which I am still working on….still haven’t managed this “write up an assignment and don’t endlessly redraft” thing I keep telling myself to stop) and Marketing of Services.    I chose both because I thought they were essential in terms of the future of the service.  The former because of increased digitisation, the latter due to decreasing usage and budgets.

The marketing module has certainly thrown up some interesting things to mull over.  One of the most interesting theories brought up in the readings so far is the so-called “leaky bucket” model of customer retention and defection.  Palmer, in his book Principles of Service Marketing, argues:

A bucket that has holes in its sides and bottom will leak water, so if a stable level is required, this can only be achieved by topping up the bucket with fresh water.  This may be an expensive process, so it would make more sense to prevent water escaping in the first place, perhaps by investing in a better quality bucket that does not leak.  So too for businesses that ‘lose’ customers.

Palmer appears to be suggesting that it is better for a service to concentrate on improving the service for existing customers rather than in investing time and money in trying to “top up the bucket” with new ones.  In other words, libraries should concentrate on their existing customer base than trying to attract new users to the service.  I’m not sure where I stand on this argument.  I firmly believe that we should do what we can to promote the service to non-users, although not with a lecturing, Victorian “we know best” type attitude.  One of the reasons I am keen on the use of web 2.0 technologies in libraries is because I believe it can help the service to reach parts of the community who have lost interest in what the library service can offer.  Social networking is the primary communication tool for many people now,  and it is vital that the public libraries have a presence in this arena.  I also believe that there should be a national advertising campaign to raise awareness of public library services.  The lack of awareness is quite striking and such a campaign, in my opinion, would have a massive impact in drawing in non-users.

On the other hand, are we just waiting our time preaching to those who will never have an interest in using the library service as they just do not believe that the service is relevant for their needs.  Should we really invest time and energy into encouraging non-users to adopt the service?  Is it just frittering away resources that would be better directed and improving the service to existing users?  Should we just cut our losses and focus on those that do use the service?

I’m not sure I know what the answer is.  I think there is too much of a tendency to equate the public library service with a corporate entity.  How the private sector operates is very different from the public sector and there should not be an attempt to ape every strategy employed by the business sector.  Yes there are things that could be learnt, but there are things that are just not right for libraries to adopt.  Maybe this is one of those things, maybe it isn’t.  I would be interested to hear what other people think about this in the comments section below and in completing my (very un-scientific) poll here.

Riding High Amongst the Waves*

Google Wave seems to be just about the hottest thing on the internet at the moment.  People have been eagerly waiting that magic invite dropping into their inbox just so they can get onboard the Next Big Thing.  Fortunately for me, I was lucky enough to receive an invite care of a fellow Tweeter (Twitter certainly has its advantages!).  So what is Google Wave actually like?

Google Wave - The Next Big Thing?

Well, to be honest, I haven’t spent a great deal of time on it so far so I’m not really in a position to give a full and fair appraisal.  That said, I’m still going to share some initial thoughts on it.  The first thing I feel I should point out is that it is quite bewildering when you first start playing with it.  When presented with the homepage (see image above), it took a little while to work out how it was supposed to work.  That is maybe why Google recommends you watch a ridiculously long video before you even contemplate diving in (do you see what I did there?!).  However, I did find this handy little video that talks you through some of the main features of Google Wave:

Although it is a little confusing to start off with, there is potential there for it to be a very useful collaborative tool.  By inviting others to join you on a ‘wave’ you can work together on a shared piece of work or just communicate in real-time (a bit like MSN Messenger but you can actually see what they are typing as they type it).  There are a number of gadgets that can be incorporated into ‘waves’ including Sudoku puzzles and chess.  It is also possible to embed Google Maps which enables people on the same ‘wave’ to collaborate on a map (which is quite useful and very easily done).  I think Mashable’s description of Google Wave sums it up quite nicely:

It combines aspects of email, instant messaging, wikis, web chat, social networking, and project management to build one elegant, in-browser communication client.

So pretty much all the best elements of Web 2.0 rolled into one.

It will be interesting to see how Google Wave develops over the coming weeks and months as more people get onboard.  It certainly has great potential to be a very useful tool, as long as people are prepared to overcome the initial hurdles.  I’ll certainly continue to play around with it and share more thoughts on it as time goes by.  Hopefully I’ll be able to share something a little more comprehensive than this effort!

There is also a Complete Guide to Google Wave available that may also help with getting to grips with it.

* I have been wondering how I would incorporate my love of Pearl Jam into one of my blog posts….looks like I managed it!

Social Networking in Libraries

Those of you that follow me on Twitter will know that I recently delivered a presentation on how social networking can be used in libraries to promote the service.  I passionately believe that libraries need to look at new ways to communicate with members of the community who either think the library is irrelevant to them or those that only make limited use of the service.  There are a number of tools out there that we could and should use to connect us to the people that matter.  Unless new, innovative marketing techniques are utilised, the library service will struggle to appear relevant in a digital age.

Anyway, I have heard a lot about SlideShare in the past, so I thought I would take the opportunity to give it a try and share my presentation (I’ve embedded it below).  I also thought it would be worth experimenting with sharing on both Flickr and YouTube too to see how they would work as presentation sharing tools (obviously both are rather more clumsy than SlideShare which is, after all, a dedicated tool for sharing presentations).  Anyway, I would be interested to hear your thoughts on this topic.  Why should social networking be used by libraries?  Or should it be used at all?  Is it merely a distraction?  Would like to hear people’s reactions to this topic.

Pinboard – A Delicious Alternative?

As I have said on this blog before, I am a big fan of Delicious.  I personally find it a much more useful way of managing my favourites than just about any other tool I have tried.  When I read an article on TechCrunch suggesting that Delicious should be ditched in favour of  a new service called Pinboard, I was intrigued to know how much better it could be.  Consequently, me being an eager beaver, I signed up as a beta tester to get a sneaky peek.  Sadly, I was not chosen as one of the 100 beta testers, but I received an invitation nonetheless.  As yet, I have not had a major play with it, but I thought I would provide a little insight into what it has to offer.

Before I go any further, however, I must point out something about Pinboard that may well put you off at the start.  At present, the people behind are charging $2.84 to sign-up for the service.  Yes, there is a one-off charge to use the service.  Not the best start admittedly. And it is made slightly worse by a posting on their blog:

The site is now open to all comers, provided they pay a small signup fee that will grow in proportion to the total number of users. My hope is that this will keep the rate of growth manageable so the site stays fast and usable for everyone.

Around about now I am expecting most people to give up reading the remainder of this post, but I shall plough on regardless for those that are still interested (I say those…..).

If you have decided that you don’t mind paying a fee for the service and sign-up anyway, you will be pleased to know that you can import your bookmarks from Delicious via a very simple procedure.  Once that simple task is completed, you are presented with your bookmarks in a somewhat minimalist fashion (certainly compared to Delicious):

Pinboard Homepage

As you can see, it is very much a stripped down bookmarking tool (a Delicious Unplugged if you will).  On the left-hand side of the screen you have your list of bookmarks, complete with titles, descriptions, tags and dates.  On the right-hand side you have what seems to be a complete list of all your tags (I haven’t checked fully, but I noticed some tags that I know I have only applied once¹) which, as you would expect, link directly to a list of all the items with that tag.  I have some reservations about this which I will come onto later.

In terms of the tools that Pinboard puts in your hands to bookmark items, there are basically four different javascript links you can drag to your browser toolbar:

• The popup bookmarklet opens a little form window when you want to bookmark a page. It’s the fastest way to add a bookmark.
• The same page bookmarklet will load the save bookmark form in the same window as the page, with no popup.  It redirects back to the page afterwards.
• The my pinboard bookmarklet will take you to your bookmarks.
• read later will throw a URL on your “to read” list without badgering you for tags or descriptions.

When you click on the pop-up bookmarklet tab, you are presented with the following pop-up:

Pinboard pop-up window

The same-page bookmarklet is much the same only, obviously, it replaces the page you were viewing before returning after it has been bookmarked:

Pinboard - same page

I quite like the idea of the read later bookmarklet.  Instead of having to use a tag on Delicious, you can simply click on the bookmarklet and a small window will briefly appear to indicate that it has been successfully added (although it doesn’t actually tell you this).  Any items marked in this way are stored in a separate area so they cannot get confused with your other bookmarks – a handy little feature in my opinion.

Adding tags is also nice and simple. Much like Delicious, Pinboard predicts what tags you are going to add so that you can ensure that there is consistency in your tagging (without this consistency I would question the value of anyone using a tagging tool to manage bookmarks).

There is, however, one problem that I have noticed so far (aside the cost).  Unlike Delicious you cannot drill down your bookmarks by using tag combinations (at least as far as I can tell at the moment).  Personally I think this is a major oversight (although granted it still being tested).  I find it very useful to find things on Delicious using tag combinations.  For example, it is much easier to find the appropriate item when using a combination of the tags ‘digitaldivide’ and ‘ebooks’ than to search through the individual bookmarks for either tag.  Hunting around for that article on ebooks and the digital divide would be too time consuming on Pinboard as it presently stands.  Hopefully this will be addressed (I have actually posted to their Google Group regarding this very issue – let’s see if it is addressed).  [I have since had a response, see update below.]

As it stands at the moment, I’d stick with Delicious but Pinboard is certainly worth trying out if you prefer your bookmarking to be minimalist (and if you are happy to pay a fee).  In the meantime, I will certainly try my best to keep you up-to-date with Pinboard as a service and, should I ditch Delicious in its favour, I will be sure to let you know!

Links

Pinboard homepage
Google Group
Pinboard on Twitter
Pinboard blog (and RSS feed)

¹ Obviously I don’t have enough tags – I’ve just discovered that Pinboard only displays your top 200 tags, not all of them.

Update

I have now had a response from Pinboard’s Google Group.  It reads:

This is not implemented yet, but it’s a feature a lot of people are asking for.    I am thinking of folding tag algebra in to search – you could have queries like “t:beans -t:rice +t:tomato” and have the search results filtered appropriately.

I’ll update the site blog as I get closer to rolling this out.

I’ll report further once this feature has been rolled out.

A Basic Guide to Twitter

I have noticed a number of people signing up for Twitter or asking me about it in recent days and weeks and, undeterred by the amount of blog posts already written on the subject, I thought I would wade in with a few tips on how to use it (there’s a glossary of terms at the end).

1.  Once you have signed up for an account and decided on a username, ensure you add a photo to your profile.  I tend to be very wary of Tweeters who do not have a picture.  Generally speaking, it tends to be spammers that don’t add one and consequently, if you don’t have a picture, many people won’t even consider following you.  So,  in short, if you want to make the most of what Twitter has to offer, add a photo pronto!

2.  Perhaps the most important tip of all.  Once you have chosen a username, make sure you fill in the ‘one line bio’ box in the settings screen.  I cannot emphasise enough just how important this is.  This is what will essentially attract fellow Tweeters to follow you.  Not only fellow Tweeters, but fellow Tweeters that you will actually be interested in following.  For example, I am interested in connecting with librarians, so I indicated in my bio some information that will attract other Tweeters to follow me: “ILS student, wannabe librarian, ebook owner and Web 2.0 addict.” By inputting such information, fellow users will instantly be able to see if you will tweet the sort of things that they are interested in.  Complete this section appropriately, and you will soon attract other users.  Furthermore, by completing this section properly, you will really start to see the benefits of being on Twitter.

3. Once you have sorted out your profile, it’s time to find some other Tweeters.  One of the best ways of finding people to follow is by using Twitter Advanced Search.  By completing the search form, you can easily find other users who ‘tweet’ about things that you are interested in or who live in your area.

4.  Keep your tweets public if you want to gain followers.  If you make them private, no-one will follow you making it less likely to discover anyone that may be of interest.

5.  To send someone a public reply, use ‘@’.  For example, using @ijclark (my username) will ensure that I get a message and that anyone else who follows you will also be able to see that message on your profile page. Furthermore, those that follow both of us will potentially be able to see any @replies (this can be turned off in the settings menu).

6.  To send a private message, use direct message (use ‘D’ followed by a space and then the username of the person the message is directed at).  This ensures that only the sender and the recipient will be able to see the message.

7.  To manage your tweets more effectively, sign up for TweetDeck. This is a desktop application that allows the user to split tweets into columns making them easier to follow as well as making it easier to send @replies, messages and ‘retweets’.

8.  If you have accounts with other social networking sites, eg Delicious, LastFM etc, sign up for Twitterfeed to enable recent activity to be posted to your profile.  For example, if you ‘love’ a song on LastFM, you can set Twitterfeed to post this activity straight to your profile.  Likewise, add a link to your Delicious page and that too can be directed to your Twitter profile via Twitterfeed.  This also applies if you have a blog.  Add the RSS feed to Twitterfeed and a link to your blog post will be added to your Twitter profile.

9.  Link Twitter to Facebook.  By adding the Twitter application on Facebook your Twitter updates will also be posted on your Facebook status…handily killing two birds with one stone.

10. Set up your Twitter account to enable mobile updates.  This makes it far more instantaneous than solely updating when you are at a computer…a massive benefit when using Twitter as the immediacy of tweets are a crucial component in making it such a useful tool.

11. Want to share a website you have found? TinyURL, bit.ly and other shortening tools are essential for shortening web addresses and enabling them to fit within your 140 character limit.

That should be enough to get you started.  It is quite common to sign up for Twitter and think ‘Eh?’, before giving up and wondering what all the fuss was about.  It’s only after you have been using it properly that you begin to see why Twitter is such an excellent tool for connecting to other people.  Since joining I have found it very beneficial, especially in terms of my job as I have been able to pick up various hints and tips I wouldn’t have been aware of previous to signing up. As long as you use Twitter properly, you too will find it a wonderful tool for communicating with others.  It’s not just about telling people about what you are having for lunch…..it is much more than that.

Glossary

Twitter: A social networking site that enables users to connect with others using short messages of 140 characters.

Tweets: The messages that are posted on Twitter.

Tweeter: Someone who writes ‘tweets’ (short messages) on Twitter.

bio: Gives other Tweeters an idea of what you are likely to ‘tweet’ about. Absolutely essential to fill this in.

@[username]: Sends public message to that user.

D [username]: Sends private message to that user.

Retweet: Resending a tweet that someone else has written.

TweetDeck: Organises ‘tweets’ into groups making it easier to manage.

Twitterfeed: A tool that sends RSS updates to your Twitter profile (including blog posts and activity from other social networking websites).

TinyURL: A tool that shortens web addresses.

User-based tagging – creating chaos or a new order?

User-based tagging is not exactly a recent phenomenon.  Over the past few years it seems that practically every Web 2.0 innovation allows users to apply tags to items to add retrieval.  This has (somewhat predictably) caused a few in the library profession to throw their arms up in despair and claim that this ‘chaos’ will be the end of organised information retrieval as we know it.  This egalitarian system of organising information was always likely to upset the more elitist members of the library fraternity.  After all, what do they know about the subject matter of a particular source of information?  No, it is best left to the ‘professionals’.  But to what extent is this an accurate reflection of the use of tags by the general public?

There are a certain amount of limitations regarding the use of tags to index an item.  For example, there is a certain amount of inconsistency regarding the application of tags.  Take a typical set of tags on Delicious for example.  An article on the Library of Congress may be tagged in several ways:

• LOC
• Library_of_Congress
• libraryofcongress

Whilst all these tags may be appropriate for the individual, the lack of consistency does cause problems for other users.  A user searching for items on any one of these terms will miss any items tagged with any of the other terms.  Clearly with the possibility of such a high degree of ‘misses’, it cannot be described as a foolproof system by any means.

There are also problems when it comes to homonyms.  Take, for example, the word ‘bow’.  This can be used to refer to the implement used to fire arrows, as well as a decoration on a present.  Sticking with Delicious, should the user tap in ‘bow’ as a search term, they would be presented with list of links related to either medieval weaponry or decoration – two very different subjects with very different audiences! However, using Delicious, it should be possible to select an additional tag that will narrow the search down, although this is still likely to miss out relevant materials.

Although there are some issues with consistency, when tagging habits are analysed the picture isn’t nearly as chaotic as one would expect.  I have recently spent some time looking at such habits, and was interested to discover that there is a high level of  commonality between users tags.  Take an article by Peter Merholz entitled ‘Metadata for the masses’.  At time of analysing tagging habits related to this item, it was bookmarked by 56 members. Despite there being 61 different tags applied to the item, there was a high level of agreement between users regarding the ‘aboutness’ of the article.  As you can see from the chart below, after the first three most popular tags there is a big drop-off in numbers.

In fact, should the third and fourth tags be combined (the latter is the plural form of the former) there is an even bigger drop-off.  Furthermore, it appears that the first three tags (four if ‘folksonomies’ was incorporated) were applied by around 50% of those that tagged the item.  This suggests that, despite popular conception, agreement can be reached regarding the ‘aboutness’ of a document without the guidance of an all knowing professional.

Delicious tags for 'Metadata for the masses'

In his article, Merholz explains why he believes user-based tagging could be beneficial for organising information:

The potential benefits of free tagging should encourage practitioners to address such shortcomings [caused by inconsistencies in tagging]. In looking for a real-world analog, I thought of the foot-worn paths that appear in a landscape over time. Called “desire lines,” these trails demonstrate how a landscape’s users choose to move, which is often not on the paved paths. A smart landscape designer will let wanderers create paths through use, and then pave the emerging walkways, ensuring optimal utility.

I think this is exactly why user-based tagging could become a useful tool.  Allowing users to freely create ‘paths’ to information would ensure that eventually a commonality will emerge.  Once this commonality has emerged it should be easier to develop a controlled language that is truly in the words of the user (rather than in the remote terminology of the ‘information professional’), making information more accessible to the average user.  Although user-based tagging does have its limitations, there is great potential there to organise large amounts of information – particularly in terms of the internet.  Ultimately our greatest concern should be making information easily accessible for the average user.  By dispensing with terminology that we are in control of and handing over a degree of control to the ‘masses’, the potential is there to attain this goal and ensure that a system that is user-friendly and relevant to the end-user emerges.

Bookmarking Websites with Delicious

I have long found that the Favourites folder on IE was not exactly the most convenient way of storing websites for future reference.  I often found that I had to go through my folders trying to find the actual link I required, all the time wondering what it was called and what folder I had actually put it in.  Many a time I eventually gave in and ended up trying to search for the site again using Google – an infuriating and wasteful way of finding that elusive website.  The need to find an alternative became even more pressing when I started my course, as I knew I would be bookmarking a lot of material.  It was at this point I finally plunged for Delicious.

I have to admit, I came to Delicious a little late.  It was already widely used by the time I came round to finally signing up for an account.  However, no sooner had I joined than I wished that I had signed up for an account a long time ago.  Quite frankly, once you have signed up for a Delicious account, you wonder why you have put up with IE Favourites for so long.  So, what actually is Delicious?  How does it work?  What are the benefits of using it as your library of bookmarks?

Once you sign up for an account with Delicious, you have the option to download a toolbar direct to your browser.  After downloading, you can simply add a website to your Delicious links at the press of a button.  Nice and simple.  The downloaded toolbar also has a number of other neat features, like a list of your most recent bookmarked items  and the ability to see your links in a sidebar.  The thing that really stands out on Delicious, is the ability to add tags to items that are bookmarked to your account.  This enables the user to retrieve links quickly and easily.  The tags can either be simple one word tags, or word combinations using ‘_’ or ‘-’.  When searching for a specific tag, you can simply click on a tag to present a list of items tagged with that specific term.  You can then drill down even further by adding another tag into the mix.  So, for example, you may click on the tag ‘football’ and get a list of items related to football.  You may then decide that you want to find the links that are related to Italian football, so you would just click on the tag ‘Italy’.  You would then be presented with all the links that have been tagged with the terms ‘football’ and ‘Italy’ (which should hopefully relate to both these tags).  This is really handy for finding items quickly and efficiently.  Unlike IE folders, you don’t have to indulge in a fruitless search through a sea of links and folders that give you very few clues about what they relate to.  You can even add a short description on Delicious to make it even easier to find the right item.

There is also the ability to browse through tags that have been applied by other users in order to find items that might also be useful for future reference.  And, if you discover a fellow account holder with similar interests, you can add them to your network and keep up-to-date with what they are bookmarking.  As a result, it is possible to not only organise your bookmarks, but also to discover new resources that may not have encountered before.  Delicious enables a degree of knowledge sharing not previously possible on the internet.

There have been arguments amongst some that the idea of individuals tagging items would be a nightmare for someone wanting to find a particular resource.  After all, if everyone applied there own tags to an individual bookmark, there would be chaos, right?  How could you guarantee that you could find all the weblinks that you were after if there is no consistency in the way users ‘tag’ their items?  Well, this isn’t as much as a problem as you might think.  It turns out there is a high level of consistency to tagging the more people save a particular bookmark.

This consistency is rather helped by the fact that Delicious suggests tags that may be appropriate for the item that you have bookmarked.  These suggestions tend to be the most popular tags which therefore helps to standardise the cataloguing of weblinks.  Even if these are ignored, however, there is still some degree of consistency.  Generally speaking, there is a tendency for people to tag things in a similar way.  As more people tag an item, a commonality amongst tags starts to emerge.  Although there is a variety in the number of tags that are applied, there does tend to be a small number of tags that will consistently appear across all users.  This commonality suggests that user-based tagging is not as anarchic as one might be lead to believe.  In fact, as Merholz has argued, such systems are rather like ‘desire lines’ that emerge over time in a landscape.  Once it becomes clear that a commonality has developed amongst users tags, it is easy to direct them to the appropriate tag (rather like a controlled vocabulary).  Considering the rapid growth of the information that is available on the internet, such a system is very useful indeed.

In short, I would highly recommend that if you haven’t already got an account with Delicious to organise your bookmarks, you should set one up as soon as possible.  It has numerous benefits when compared to other methods of organising your favourites (like IE folders), not least the ease of access.  And despite some concerns about the ability for everyone to freely apply tags to their bookmarks, the fact that a degree of commonality emerges suggests that these fears are unfounded.  Considering that there are now well over one trillion unique urls, organising content for retrieval is absolutely vital.

Google Introduces Customised Searching

Another day, another Google innovation.  Those people at Google have now introduced a tool that allows users to customise their search results.  At the moment only those with a Google account can actually take advantage of the new search engine, but it is an interesting step in the evolution of Google.  This new tool enables users to move search results up and down the rankings to suit their own needs.  Once results have been moved, when the user next conducts a search using the same terms, the results will be ranked as previously stipulated.  It will also enable logged in users to write comments next to web links which would then be displayed to other users.

The potential for this tool is huge.  Search results have the potential to be far more relevant to the user than they are at the moment.  By ensuring that search results are customisable, it also ensures that users can relevance rank according to their own individual needs, rather than simply accept the processes of Google’s search engine.  Greg Sterling of SearchEngineLand.com, hints at the possibilities:

“Lots of people have tried so-called ‘social search’, combining algorithmic search with human editorial input, because the perception is that humans have the ability to craft a better result in any given situation because they can make distinctions machines can’t.

“So this could be quite dramatic if they get a lot of people participating because it could improve the algorithms of the process and serve up better search results.”

It will be interesting to see how Google’s latest venture catches on over the coming months.  Could this be the future of internet searches¹?

¹ Have you used the new customisable search engine by Google?  If so, what are your thoughts?