Method #7 Tags Are Delicious!

Tags are definitely more user friendly and laid back than regular subject headings that librarians try to adhere to. For example, in Amazon, funny was a tag used to describe an item whereas librarians would tend to use the term humor as a subject heading. Whenever I tag my work I try to think how others would look up the information so that I would get the most amount of hits. I actually set up a Delicious account when I took the North Texas 23 Things training and have been using it ever since but I did learn some new things with the TSLAC 2.0 as well. When I took the NT23, I bookmarked a lot of the sites that I add my weekly library newsletter so that I don't have to look each one up separately each time. In the TSLAC 2.0 training, I added Tampa Bay Library Association and TSLAC IDCEC bookmarks to my Delicious network because I saw a lot of good information. After reading the article "Several Habits of Wildly Successful Del.icio.us users" blog, I shared the website with my boss and other department heads and I also requested updates from the Bizzia site because it had a lot of good information as well. I am looking forward to using the information that I learned from both trainings to continue improving how I use Delicious and tagging.

Tag, Your It!

Wikipedia had a mouthful to say about tagging. Librarians have been tagging for years, with the help of Sears Subject headings and Library of Congress subject headings to name a couple. Now with the web, subjects have become a free for all in the name of tagging. It is pretty obvious that some people are good at it and some are not. The topic to be tagged and what is considered important is actually in the eye of the tagger. For example, usually when I write about what the library is doing, the first tag I put is the library's name because I want people to find us. Someone else who reads my articles may not put the library's name because the library may not be the main topic of the article. The tagging assignment could easily be placed earlier on in the web 2.0 training because a lot of the web 2.0 tools give the option for tagging so learning about tagging early on could help know what it is and possibly how to do it. Tagging can be beneficial to libraries serving thier patrons but the most important thing is that the tags still need to be reviewed and evaluated to make sure that it provides the information needed so that the patrons can find the information they are looking for.