Social Bookmarking

Another small project I just did for TLC 2.0 is to explore Del.icio.us and learn more about tagging and social bookmarking. For me one of the interesting and most useful tools in Del.icio.us is the feature that allows you to click on the link for the other users who bookmarked (or saved) the site. It is interesting because it allows you to not only view people's notes but see all sorts of common tags associated with that particular site and what words individual users tagged (or associated) it with. This sort of free-flowing social tagging or social cataloging if you will of online sites, I believe shows a method that more libraries should learn to embrace. Because social bookmarking or tagging is useful not just in cataloging the online environment, but it could help redesign how physical materials are tagged as well. Meaning there's no reason to abandon LOC subject headings, yet by the same token if social tagging allows more people to help describe a certain item, in Del.icio.us's case the items are web sites, then hopefully or potentially anyway it may make the items easier to find. If this is true than why not incorporate similar philosophies in libraries. After all a library's main goal is to make materials more readily available and if tagging could make them easier for people to find later on, then why not use these methods along with the methods already in place (like subject headings, etc.). Plus, tagging and cataloging from a library-type perspective under similar circumstances is already being done by sites like LibraryThing. Ultimately, IMO social bookmarking will make life easier for everyone in the long run eventually from users to librarians because of how easier it could make it to find information quickly.