Tag-licious

Oh dear!! Somehow I am having serious difficulties with this week. I have started it, skipped it, returned to it and now I am determined to finish it!! I wonder if anyone else is finding this week particularly challenging? I think the problem stems from the fact that I am not a very prolific bookmarker normally, and so the idea of a way to manage this has not really occurred to me because it doesn't take much effort to find what I am looking for in a bookmark list of ten sites!!

I can see the usefulness of this system, however. My mother suffered intense frustration recently because she changed her server and lost her carefully hoarded bookmarks, so having a system where they are accessible independent from your PC could really make life easier.

I checked out the 'tag cloud' (which is, by the way, quite a poetic name for a list of web addresses) of Sutherland library and Cleveland library and the first thing I was struck by was the usefulness of having a list of addresses whose content has been vouched for by the library. Sometimes I waste ages on the web trying to find information, and only accessing addresses from which the information seems a little dodgy. Using tags which other, more informed, people have found useful helps to avoid this situation. It also allowed me to find information which I may have had a little trouble looking for but which was really interesting, such as the transcript of the PM's apology speech, or death, funeral and tribute notices in the SMH. I really enjoy reading newspaper tributes because they are so touching.

I created my own delicious account, and am in the process of finding bookmarks to decorate it with. I quite enjoyed the process of selecting tags for the sites (I felt a bit like a cataloguer) and found the way the site suggested popular tags that had been used for the site before helpful. Being able to keyword search bookmarks does seem handy - a bit like having a little, personally selected web.

On a totally different point, I have joined a wiki for work relating the youth activities, and wanted to show off the fact that I am putting into practice what I have learned!!