Using del.icio.us in AskAway Part of the AskAway Best Practices session November 16, 2006 Joy Schwarz Winnefox Library System

First of all… what is del.icio.us? Its a web site at Its pronounced just like the word delicious The del.icio.us domain name is a domain hack using the.us domain to form a word. It uses the same top-level domain a lot of libraries use, like Its a social bookmarking web service for storing, sharing, and discovering web bookmarks Its free to use Its been around since 2003 & was bought by Yahoo about a year ago Its part of the Web 2.0 movement -- emphasizing online collaboration and sharing among users Think of it as bookmarks on steroids

What makes it so special? It allows us to collaborate so we may contribute to a set of shared bookmarks Users tag each of their bookmarks with multiple freely-chosen keywords; this is also called folksonomy. These are not Sears or Library of Congress subject headings. You can see a combined view of everyone's bookmarks that use a tag. For example the URL shows all the pages del.icio.us users have tagged "photography". RSS newsfeeds are available for both bookmarks and tags. You can subscribe to these newsfeeds in your newsfeed aggregator, like Bloglines

So what does this have to do with AskAway? Why am I telling you about it? Like you… When I monitor chat, I want to have good resources handy so I can quickly find the answer for a patron I turn to the Librarians Index to the Internet for librarian- selected resources on topics, but I dont always find what Im looking for there My reference skills arent as strong as Id like in some subject areas, so Ive been working to build up some good bookmarks for myself

So… Ive been moving my bookmarks out of my web browser into del.icio.us so I have a toolbox handy just for when I monitor chat del.icio.us I named the set of bookmarks And then I thought, what if everyone in the consortium wanted to share? We could all benefit!

What Im proposing Everyone in the AskAway Consortium has access to add items to the bookmarks

Heres how you can participate – the basics: Go to in your web browserhttp://del.icio.us Log in with username: askawaywisc password: forward Add a bookmark: Its easiest to use buttons youve added to your web browser Its also easy to use the bookmarklet added to your toolbar Find info on installing either of these at Tag the item: Use a single word If you want to use multiple words, combine them with a + sign As an additional tag, add your initials. Its OK to stay logged in to del.icio.us all the time; that way you can easily use the buttons to bookmark web pages to del.icio.us as you see them.

In conclusion… If youre not interested in participating right now, consider using Bloglines or other newsfeed aggregator to subscribe to its RSS feed: So, the bookmarks are there for you if youd like to use them! I look forward to seeing new bookmarks appear there.