Week 10: Tag and the City

Once again, Web2.0 has almost a sixth sense when it comes to our weekly topic and my life.

My final paper for my Information Organization class was all about "subjects." One of the requirements was to take our unique topic and search for it using one web search engine and one web resource. Naturally, with all of the buzz, I chose to use Delicious as my web resource.

Setting up my account was pretty easy and searching and tagging items was even better. Using it for my paper was even more beneficial to me when combined with the Web2.0 training since it was a timely, in depth project on social tagging. While I will spare everyone a repeat of the 15 pages of knowledge I have now gained, I believe Delicious will be a great Library resource for years to come.

One of the downsides of course is the lack of controlled vocabulary in the tagging. If someone was to search for my account and see my tag "Bibliography" it would probably not be very helpful to them. However, for my other class, I found it to be a lifesaver to group my resources for my bibliography project together. (My topic by the way, is Jewish Fiction for children between the ages of 9 and 12).

But this lack of controlled vocabulary is also one of the great things about it, since it gives us an unexpected look into how patrons think about the information they need.