del.icio.us

I *think* del.icio.us is finally starting to click (pun intended) for me. I've been at the Menasha Public Library since June. Our del.icio.us page is one of those listed as an example this week, but I have to admit that I didn't quite understand the appeal the first couple of times I looked at it. I'm still not all of the way there, but I'm getting there. It becomes a lot more clear when you create and account and start to tag your own sites, as opposed to seeing only the finished product. I still don't care for the look of the site - it's a little too spare. At least now, though, I see the benefit.

As far as other uses, I think there's potential for us with a library's local history collection. Like most libraries, we have many photographs in our collection with little to no description. Opening these up to tagging might result in people adding information about these photos that we didn't know.

I'm not a cataloger. In fact, I didn't even have to take cataloging in library school. In spite of that, I like controlled vocabulary. While 'cookery' is a confusing heading for most people, at least you know that by using it, you should get all of the cookbooks in the library. Tagging seems far more likely to result in missing a resource.