“Del.icio.us Instructional Design” Integrating Social Bookmarking into your Library Instruction Felicia Palsson Instruction & Reference Librarian University of Southern California

O UTLINE What is social bookmarking/ the social web? How does Del.icio.us work? How can Del.icio.us be used in library instruction?

S OCIAL W EB & S OCIAL B OOKMARKING Two excellent resources: Clay Shirky, “Ontology is Overrated” “Five Weeks to a Social Library”

S OCIAL W EB, aka W EB 2.0 The key is tagging (“social tagging”)

P ROS AND C ONS OF S OCIAL T AGGING It’s user-driven: Builds community Generates niche cultures based on usage of terms It lacks standards and structure: Can get out of control Sometimes not descriptive (e.g. “beautiful”)

Writing 140 = freshman level Writing 340 = junior level C ORE CURRICULUM WRITING PROGRAM AT USC

C OLLABORATION WITH W RITING 340 I NSTRUCTOR She wanted: to use web 2.0 tools students to “seamlessly navigate between different resources” (web and proprietary) students to find like-minded researchers She said, “Can you teach Del.icio.us?”

How does Del.icio.us work? (live demo)

A RTICLE DELIVERY : S TEPS 1. Create a tag for your topic (“task tagging”) 2. Tag-as-you-go (through databases, web) 3. Create a feed for the tag 4. Articles are delivered to your feed reader / iGoogle / my Yahoo! / home page / blog / etc.

M Y AWARENESS ALLOWED ME TO … better explain subject headings show them how to create their own terms help them use their terms to organize resources

Subject Headings (controlled) Tagging (uncontrolled)

“Seamlessly navigate between different resources” = “Prevent information overload”

S OME W AYS TO U SE D EL. ICIO. US IN I NSTRUCTION Help students understand authority control (by comparison) and how library resources are organized Show that databases are not “separate” from the web (both can be tagged)

S OME W AYS TO U SE D EL. ICIO. US IN I NSTRUCTION Help students navigate “seamlessly” between different kinds of resources Show why networking is research, too! Teach article delivery and resource management

Questions?