LIS 9763

    I think this week’s readings have been the most beneficial to me so far in this course. I really thought I understood social tagging, and to put it bluntly, I didn’t really know why anyone would be interested in it. I heard the term and thought ‘social’ before thinking ‘tagging’. I’ve heard in several interviews and articles that when you use these types of sites, the chances of you really being exposed to any new topics are minimal because you are likely to encounter people similar to yourself in these environments. I may not be doing the argument justice, but it led me to be pretty cynical about the idea. I also figured I could find out about what I was interested in on my own.
    After doing this week’s readings, I now understand the personal element of bookmarking on Delicious. I have a very messy bookmarks list and was interested in having a place for my bookmarks that I could add multiple descriptors to. I also like the fact that they are searchable. I added many of my old bookmarks to my Delicious account and so far, I am very pleased with the outcome. I think I will keep adding them and see how I like it. I also tried to search tags for topics I thought I would b interested in and I have to say, at this point I am more interested in the personal benefits. After looking at the case studies however, I think there is more a case for a link roll where there is a specific topic of interest that a person is tagging or searching.
    The thing that I found the most interesting about the library uses for Delicious was that on some sites it was very apparent what was tagged or imported bookmarks. On other sites however, I had difficulty telling what was the link roll. There also seemed to be no commonality between academic vs. public libraries in which approach they took. There is something to be said for being transparent and stating where the links came from, but there also seems to be a bit of a stigma around this practice. The stigma may be my own personally, but I find I am less likely to think a site is reputable if it appears is a blog roll. I don’t know why this is, but I think it has to do with the ‘social’ part of the practice. I think of tagging links as something I would do for fun, rather than because I think it’s important for a more academic reason. The reason I bring this up is because I doubt I am alone on this. I think I’m pretty willing to try new technologies so I don’t think I’m a total luddite in this case.
    I think if I had to choose an approach, I would choose the more transparent use of link rolls, where it is stated that the links were gathered in that manner. This way, the skeptics may be less willing click the links, but at least users know what they are getting. I found that a couple of the libraries pushed their link rolls off to the left hand side and I really had to take a closer looks because I thought they were ads.
    Overall, I think there is a benefit to libraries using these link rolls. They allow for easy updates to the website, and they also provide a forum for taggers to look for other similar information. I’m not totally convinced that this would be the social software I would include on a library website I was building, but this may be because I’m not very confident with the technology yet. This is the first time this course I have really felt kind of intimidated by a social software and I think that alone was a good experience fore me because I now have a better appreciation for the apprehension library users may feel around these technologies. I have always thought of these technologies from the implementation perspective and how it would help the library. I think now I will be more concerned about buy in from the user population than I was before.