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Getting Organized Using Delicious 9

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INTRODUCTION

Reference librarians, as with most other Internet us-ers, are constantly going back to sites that theyve vis-

ited before. One could argue that reference librariansmay do this even more than most. In fact, some sitesare continually accessed to answer those most com-mon questionslocal statistics, value of a used car,what time zone a certain country is in, etc. Even thefirst Web browsers offered ways to mark a site in or-der to return to it easily. That method was, and stillis, known as bookmarking. However, as the Web be-comes more and more complex and the needs of us-ers also become increasingly complex, bookmarks

as weve known them may no longer be the solution.Then again, the better solution I offered in the pastmay also no longer be up to the task. In this chapter,Ill walk you through the online world of bookmarks,through static resource Web pages, to the solutionI offer today, the online social bookmarking serviceknown as Delicious.

Bookmarks

One of the first things we learn to do in a browser,beyond using the back button, is how to set a book-

mark. Bookmarks give us the ability to return quicklyto an online resource without having to rememberan often long and cryptic URL. In my previous book,Using the Internet as a Reference Tool (Neal-Schuman,2001), I discussed the following problems with usingbookmarks to store previously found resources foruse at the reference desk:

Chapter 2

Getting Organized Using Delicious

Bookmarks are rarely well organized. Whenever

Ive asked a room full of librarians how many of

them have taken the time to organize their book-

marks (usually hundreds of them) into logical fold-

ers, generally less than 20 percent of those in the

room raise their hands. The rest of us have just one

long list of bookmarks without any convenient way

to find any specific one.

Bookmarks were restricted to one computer. If you

have multiple computers at your reference desk,

the bookmarks on one might not be on another,

thus making it inconvenient to find the information

youre looking for if the bookmark you need is on

a computer being used by another librarian.

Bookmarks were restricted to the staff computers.

Unless a staff member took the time to copy the

bookmark files from the staff computers and place

them on the patron computers, the patrons in the

building were forced to speak to someone at the

desk to be able to take advantage of the librarian-

created bookmarks.

Bookmarks placed on library computers are not

available to remote-access patrons. In this age of

continuing mobility of information access, libraries

need to make the information they provide ac-cessible outside of the physical boundaries of the

library building.

Web Pages

In Using the Internet as a Reference Tool, I offered asolution to all of these problems: the library should


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10 Searching 2.0create a Web page (or group of pages, dependingon the number of resource links needed) to provideaccess to those links. This solution, at the time,solved all of the previously mentioned problems inthe following ways:

Web pages were generally well organized in a logi-

cal manner whether alphabetically or by subject.

Web pages are available to all devices containing

a Web browser. So, regardless of which computer

someone is using (public, staff, a patrons laptop)

or even if using another device such as a smart-

phone, the links are available in any location, at

any time.

I continued in the book with several excellent ex-amples of libraries implementing this exact solution.

Most libraries of at least a moderate size had or havesince created such Web pages. However, even thoughthis solution at the time was a good one, it still hadone major problem: you needed to learn some mark-upHTML (hypertext markup language) or XHTML(extensible hypertext markup language)to imple-ment it. Though I think everyone should still learnat least some basic Web page creation skills, today aneven better solution not only solves this last naggingproblem but also provides additional features that no

Web page I described back in 2000 could ever have

provided. That solution is Delicious.

DELICIOUS

Delicious (http://www.delicious.com/) is a socialbookmarking service that allows users to tag, save,manage and share web pages from a centralizedsource. With emphasis on the power of the commu-nity, Delicious greatly improves how people discover,remember and share on the Internet.

At its most basic level, Delicious (currentlyowned by Yahoo!) stores your bookmarks for you

on its Web site, allowing anyone to access thosebookmarks from any Web-accessible device withoutany markup knowledge required. Beyond this benefit,Delicious offers several additional features, such asthe following, that allow it to be a more flexible solu-tion than a static Web page:

Delicious bookmarks can be added to your ac-

count with just a few mouse clicks.

A Delicious account can be shared by multiple

users, thus allowing you to have a single account

for the entire library staff, at the branch or system

level.

Bookmarks in one Delicious account are automati-

cally cross-referenced with all other Delicious user

accounts, creating connections among all of its

users.

Anyone can subscribe to RSS (really simple syndi-

cation) feeds from Delicious and receive automatic

notification of new bookmarks.

Delicious bookmarks are easily searchable, allow-

ing for less structure and more free-form organiza-

tion through the use of tags.

Lets take a look at each one of these in a little

more detail. Even if you had extensive HTML knowl-edge, updating a Web page takes at least a few min-utes to accomplish. You need to enter the usernameand password for the server, log in, find the correctfile, open it, make your changes, save the changes,and log out. This process assumes that you have thecorrect level of access on your server. If you dont,you may face the situation of needing to submit yourchange to the appropriate person in the IT (informa-tion technology) department and then wait a few daysbefore your change appears. With Delicious, as Ill

show later in this chapter, all you need to do to add anew bookmark is click on an icon, wait for the additem window to appear, and click OK. This is amuch simpler and faster procedure than updating a

Web page.As with Web pages, Delicious accounts can be

shared among staff members by giving them the ap-propriate username and password. However, sincethis service is hosted by a third party, theres no needto get your IT department involved, especially if youhave one that is loathe to give out server usernames

and passwords to nontechnical staff.Delicious stores all of the links submitted by their

users in a large database. The benefit to this method isthat Delicious is then able to track which users haveadded which links. With this information, Deliciousis able, not only to tell you that 368 other users havealso added the same link that youve added, but alsoto link you to those other users accounts. This is thesocial aspect of the service: users who add the same


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bookmarks are interested in the same topics. This

function allows a user to browse related resources,closely mirroring the serendipity that people onceassociated with card catalogs and now bemoan theloss of in modern-day online catalogs.

Through the use of RSS, patrons can subscribeto your librarys Delicious account and receive near-automatic notification of new bookmarks added toyour account. Through the use of tags (discussednext) patrons can also use RSS feeds to receive no-tification of new bookmarks on particular topics ofinterest.

When you add a new bookmark to your Deliciousaccount, the link title and URL fields are automati-cally populated. You are also offered two additionalfields: notes and tags. The notes field allows youto enter a narrative description of the page yourebookmarking. The tags field allows you to add ad-ditional keywords that you wish to have associatedwith this bookmark. Figure 2-1 shows my Deliciousaccount with items tagged searching2.0. (All of the

links presented in this book have been tagged with

this keyword.) Lets go ahead and walk you throughthe creation of a Delicious account and the basicworkings of what the service has to offer.

Creating a Delicious Account

The first step to using Delicious is to create a useraccount. To do so, open Deliciouss homepage (www.delicious.com; see my Delicious homepage in Figure2-2) and click on the link in the upper right cornerlabeled Join now. Choose a username and pass-word, enter your e-mail address, and click register.

(Feel free to create your own personal account forpractice. Eventually youll want to create an accountfor your library with an appropriate username, suchas the name of the library.) Once logged in, youll beon the install bookmarking tools page.

Adding Bookmarks

There are four main ways for adding bookmarks toyour account: via importing, via Save a new book-

Figure 2-1 The bookmarks for this book as shown in Delicious


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12 Searching 2.0

mark, via the browser buttons, and via the Deliciousbookmark. Although importing is something yourelikely to do only once, lets cover this first since itsthe best way to get numerous resources into youraccount to play with.

Importing

The current step on your install bookmarking toolspage should be add bookmarking buttons. Skip thisstep and go to step 3, import existing bookmarks.

Your page should look similar to the Web page in

Figure 2-3.Importing allows you to add an existing list of

bookmarks, generally from your browser, into yourDelicious account. Assuming that the browser at yourdesk already has a great number of bookmarks, thisis an excellent starting point. This process occursin two steps. The Web site (https://secure.delicious.com/register/import) offers instructions for InternetExplorer 7 users. A link is offered for users of differ-

ent browsers, such as Internet Explorer 6, Firefox,Safari, and Opera. First, youll need to export yourbookmarks (step A). If youre an Internet Explorer7 user, choose File from the menu bar, then selectImport and Export. Once the Import/Export Wiz-ard starts, click Next, select Export Favorites,and click Next again. Select Favorites to exporteverything, or select a particular folder to exportand then click Next. Browse for an appropriatelocation to export your file (I suggest your desktop)and click Next. Click Finish to start the export

process. After just a few moments you should be toldthat the export was complete. Click OK to closethis window.

If youre a Firefox user, select Bookmarks thenOrganize Bookmarks from the menu bar. Oncethe Bookmarks Manager has opened, select Filethen Export. Choose a location for your exportedfile (again, I recommend the desktop) and click theSave button. Once you return to the Bookmarks

Figure 2-2 The Delicious homepage


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Getting Organized Using Delicious 13Figure 2-3 Importing interface


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14 Searching 2.0Manager you can close it to return to your browser.For those of you using other browsers, the directionsshould be similar to those for Internet Explorer andFirefox. Check your browsers help file if you cantfind the correct menu item.

This completes the first step in the importingprocess. In the second step (step B) you need to clickBrowse to locate and select your exported file. Youthen need to answer a few questions and (maybe)provide some tags. You are provided with a formfield that contains the word imported. This meansthat all of the bookmarks you import through thisprocess will have the tag imported. You can removethis tag if you wish. You can also add additional tagsby creating a comma-delimited list in this field. Inmany cases, my students can think of no one key-

word (other than imported) that would apply toall of the bookmarks theyre about to add to theiraccount. However, one possible situation may be,for example, a library creating a single account forall staff to use, with many staff wishing to contributetheir own bookmarks. You could import individualstaff bookmark lists and tag each list with the nameof the staff person who contributed it. Its not perfect,but its an example.

The next three questions are, at this point, muchmore important.

Do you want to keep all your imported bookmarks

on Delicious private? In the past all imported book-

marks were automatically labeled as privateonly

you could see them unless you made them public.

The purpose of this was to keep people from

accidentally importing a single bookmark out of

thousands that they didnt necessarily want other

people to know they had. Although this was nice

from a privacy perspective, it caused problems

for some. (When the Nebraska Library Commis-

sion imported 4,500 bookmarks into our account,someone had to go through every one and make

them public, one at a time.) With this new version

of Delicious, you have the ability to make all of your

imported bookmarks public or private. Choose

wisely. If you do choose public, be sure you want

them all to be public. If you choose private, re-

member that itll take some work to make them

all public later should you change your mind.

Do you want to add popular tags to your book-

marks? This is the handiest of the three ques-

tions. Choosing yes here will instruct Delicious

to automatically compare your bookmarks to the

bookmarks already in the system and add tags

to those already used often enough by others to

be considered popular. Again, if youre importing

thousands, or even just a hundred bookmarks,

this will simplify your life by saving you from having

to individually tag most of your resources. Please

keep in mind that this system isnt perfect. For ex-

ample, if youre the only person with that resource,

it wont be assigned any tags. If just a few people

have previously added the resource to Delicious

but it doesnt have any commonly used tags, again,

your bookmarks wont be assigned automatic tags

during the import process. Also, if youve devisedsome unique tagging scheme, this will need to

be implemented manually. If the bookmarks you

exported were organized into folders, the name of

the folder containing the bookmarks will be added

as a tag when imported into Delicious.

What should happen if a bookmark you are import-

ing already exists in your Delicious bookmarks? If

youre importing bookmarks as a way to populate

your account that currently has no bookmarks, this

option will not be relevant. However, if your account

already includes a number of bookmarks andyoure now importing more, this option requires

your close attention. If you choose Replace,

any imported bookmark that matches an existing

bookmark (by URL) will replace the original book-

mark. Choosing only import bookmarks I dont

already have will cause the import to ignore any

duplicated bookmarks.

Before the import is completed, youre offered theoption to be e-mailed when the process is com-

pleted. Unless youve got just a few bookmarks, thisprocess tends to take a bit of time, hours for some,so you may want to take advantage of this option.

Just check the box and enter your e-mail address inthe provided field.

All thats left to do is to click the Import Nowbutton to start the process. As previously mentioned,it will most likely take at least a minute or two forthe first bookmarks to show up in your account and


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perhaps hours for all of them to appear dependingon the number youre importing. Be patient; theywill all appear eventually.

Save a New Bookmark

When viewing any page in Delicious, you will see aSave a new bookmark link in a box near the upperright corner of the page. (This link was previouslyknown as Post and located in a bar near the top leftof the page.) Clicking on this link will open the Save

a new bookmark page, as shown in Figure 2-4.Enter the URL of the page you would like to

bookmark into the URL field. The easiest way todo this is to open the page you wish to bookmarkin another browser window or tab, copy the URLfrom the address bar, and paste it into this field.Once youve entered the URL, click the Next but-ton to continue. Youll then be presented with thefull interface for entering a new bookmark into yourDelicious account, as shown in Figure 2-5.

This page has four fieldsURL, title, notes, and

tagsand an optiondo not sharethat you canedit:

URL:

This field should contain the URL that you entered

on the previous screen. Should you need to edit

it, you may do so here. This is a required field.

TITLE:

This field should contain the title of the Web page

located at the URL given, as set by that pages

author. In many cases, this title may contain too

little or too much information. Feel free to edit it

to fit your needs. (In Figure 2-5, I edited the title

by removing the supplied Providing a Safer and

Faster Internet tagline.) This is a required field.

NOTES:

Here you may enter up to 1,000 characters of

descriptive content. In some cases, I copy and

paste some text from the site itself, as Ive done

in Figure 2-5. This information will be displayed inyour bookmarks list and will also be completely

searchable.

TAGS:

Unlike your browser, Delicious does not rely on

folders to keep your bookmarks organized. Instead

it relies on user-supplied tags, as I discussed in

Chapter 1. Here you need to enter whichever tags

you might use to find this bookmark again as a

space-delimited list. You may enter as many tags

as you think are appropriate. If youre not sure

which tags to use or youre just interested in see-

ing what tags others have used for this bookmark,

scroll down the page to the Tags tab. Here youll

find up to three sections: Recommended, Popu-

lar, and All my tags. Each one may be opened

or closed by clicking on the triangle to the left of

the section header. Any of the tags in these sec-

tions may be clicked and automatically added to

your list of tags. (At first, the All my tags section

Figure 2-4 The Save a new bookmark page


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16 Searching 2.0

will be sparse, but as you use your account, the

list will grow.) There is also a People tab, which

is discussed later in this chapter.

Do Not Share:

Checking this option keeps this bookmark private.

This means that only you will be able to see it

when youre logged into your account. The factthat you have bookmarked it will still be counted

in Deliciouss statistics (discussed later), but oth-

ers will not see that you have done so. Figure 2-6

shows the results of my filling in this form.

All thats left to do is to click the Save button toadd the bookmark to your account. Youll be sent toyour bookmarks page, where it should appear at the

top of your bookmarks list. You also have the optionof clicking the Cancel button if you decide you donot wish to save this bookmark to your account.

Browser Buttons

The browser buttons were made available for you to

install as part of the account creation process or forlater installation by choosing Help and then eitherQuick tour for Firefox Add-on or Quick tour forInternet Explorer Add-on under the Learn moreabout Delicious heading. Whichever you pick, theresults will be the same. At the bottom of thepage is a link to install the add-on. Click on thislink, click on add button, and then confirm to yourbrowser that you wish these buttons to be installed.

Figure 2-5 Add tags and notes


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Soon youll find an additional two buttons in yourbrowsers button bar, as shown in Figure 2-7.

The first button is of the Delicious logo, whichwhen clicked will retrieve your bookmarks page. (Ifyou are not already logged into your account, youwill be asked to do so.) This allows simple one-click

access to all of your resources. The second buttonlooks like a small old-style price tag and is labeledTag. This button saves you from all of the copyingand pasting from multiple browser windows or tabsdescribed in the previous section. Once youre ona page that you wish to add to your account, justclick on the Tag button and a window will appeargiving you access to the Save a bookmark form, asshown in Figure 2-8. The URL and title of the page

will automatically appear in the appropriate fields. Ifyou had selected any text on the page, it will appear,subject to the 1,000 character limit, automatically inthe notes field. All you need to do now is add tags (bytyping or choosing from the provided suggestions),make any other edits, and click the Save button.

The window will disappear and your new bookmarkwill have been added to your account. This is how Iadd the majority of my bookmarks to my account.

Bookmarklet

Should you find yourself in the position of not beingable to install buttons into your browser, another wayto accomplish the button-like adding of bookmarksto your account is the Delicious bookmarklet. You

Figure 2-6 The completed Save a new bookmark form


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can add a bookmarklet to your browser just as youwould add any traditional bookmark, but bookmark-lets, instead of pointing you to particular Web pages,are actually little scripts that perform an action. Inthis case, the action is to open the same window thatthe Tag button opened.

Next, choose the version that works with yourbrowser and follow the directions. This involvesdragging the appropriate link (www.delicious.com/save, accessed by clicking the Save a new bookmarklink) onto your browsers bookmarks toolbar, or right

clicking on the page and selecting Bookmark ThisPage or Add to Favorites or whichever choice ac-complishes this in your browser. In Internet Explorer,the bookmarklet will appear in the Links toolbarwhen you save the page to the Links folder underFavorites. Figure 2-9 shows the bookmarklet in-stalled on my browser bookmarks toolbar. From thispoint forward, whenever youre on a page you wishto add to your Delicious account, just click on thebookmarklet and it will work the same way as thebrowser button.

Figure 2-7 The Delicious browser buttons

Figure 2-8 Adding via a browser button


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My Bookmarks

Now that you have an account and know how toadd bookmarks, lets look at the main interface forDelicious, your bookmarks page. As you can quicklysee from Figure 2-10, a lot of different features ap-pear on this screen. Lets begin with an overview ofthe major features of this screen and then examinesome of the specifics. I wont go into extensive detail

about every single feature but will provide more thanenough information for you to become familiar withnavigating Delicious.

Across the top of the page are links for your ac-count profile (in Figure 2-11, mine says Signed inas travelinlibrarian), such as Inbox, Settings, andSign Out (always useful when youre on a publiccomputer). Also included is a link for informationabout Delicious services labeled Whats New? As

you can see in Figure 2-11, a link for feedback wasonce offered, but no longer.

Below these, to the left, are buttons for Home,Bookmarks, People, and Tags. The Home tabtakes you back to the Delicious homepage, whichis what you saw when you first came to the site buthadnt logged in yet. Bookmarks offers subchoicesof My Bookmarks, Popular, Recent, and Look

up a URL. People offers subchoices of My Net-work and Go to a User. Tags offers subchoicesof My Tags, My Subscriptions, and Explore. Youcan see these tabs in Figure 2-12.

Below this, the main body of the page tells youthe name of the account for the bookmarks yourecurrently displaying and, assuming youre loggedinto your account, shows links for your Network,Tags, Subscriptions, and Inbox (see Figure 2-

Figure 2-9 The Delicious bookmarklet


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20 Searching 2.0Figure 2-10 The default My Bookmarks view

Figure 2-11 Links about Delicious


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13). Youll also find a link to the users homepage, if

provided in the users public profile, as well as linksto more bookmarks in Popular, Recent, or Lookup a URL.

Now youll see the name of the account yourecurrently viewing (travelinlibrarian in Figure 2-13),along with a Type a tag field. Off to the right, youllsee the number of bookmarks currently listed in thisaccount and that they are Sorted by Most Recent.Clicking on the Sorted by link will give you theability to re-sort your bookmarks alphabetically orby popularity, or you can reverse the current order.

Below this, if sorted by most recent, youll see theten most recent bookmarks added to your accountin the Regular view. Two other views are available:Title view and Full view. Figures 2-14 and 2-15show these different views of the current screen. Forthe rest of the chapter, Ill be staying in the Regularview.

Figure 2-16 highlights a single bookmark forus to examine. To the left is the date the bookmark

was added to the account, followed by the title of

the bookmark, which is also the hyperlink to thatpage. Beneath this will be displayed any text thatwas entered into the bookmarks notes field. Belowthis are links that allow you to EDIT or DELETEthis particular bookmark. To the right youll findthe number of other account holders who have alsobookmarked the page and the tags that are assignedto that bookmark.

Clicking on the number of other users fora bookmark will take you to the People page forthat bookmark. This page, as shown in Figure 2-17,

shows you the names of the users who have pub-licly bookmarked the page and the tags and notesthey added to that page. Links to those users publicpages and all of the tags are hyperlinked to theirappropriate Delicious pages. Clicking on a tag as-sociated with one of your bookmarks will take youto a page listing the bookmarks in your account thathave that tag. Figure 2-18 shows the page for mygenerator tag.

Figure 2-12 Navigation links


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22 Searching 2.0Figure 2-13 Account links

Figure 2-14 Title view


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23 Searching 2.0Figure 2-15 Full view

Figure 2-16 Details of a bookmark

Another way to see all of the bookmarks for a

particular tag in your account is to type it into theType a tag field at the top of your bookmarks list.If I were to type generatorinto that field and thenpress Enter I would end up at the same page shownin Figure 2-19. At the bottom of this page is the linkfor the RSS feed for what youre looking at (in thiscase, all of the bookmarks for this account) and thelink to change the number of bookmarks shownper page: 10, 25, 50, or 100 (see arrows in Figure2-19). At the very bottom of the page are all of theabout and legal links for Delicious as a company

(see Figure 2-20).Back on your bookmarks page, if you scroll back

up to the top of the page and look to the top right of

the screen, youll see a light blue box containing threelinks: Save a new bookmark (covered in previoussection), Edit public profile, and Tag options.

Edit public profile:

Clicking this link takes you to the edit screen of your

accounts public profile. Figure 2-21 shows the edit

screen, and Figure 2-22 shows the public version

of my profile. Here you can enter such information

as your real name, e-mail address, and Web site.

Fill in as little or as much information as you feel

comfortable providing.


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24 Searching 2.0Figure 2-17 The People page for a bookmark

Figure 2-18 My generator tag page


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25 Searching 2.0Figure 2-19 Links for the feed and number of bookmarks displayed per page

Figure 2-20 The legal links


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26 Searching 2.0Figure 2-21 Edit public profile

Figure 2-22 My public profile


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27 Searching 2.0 Tag options:

Clicking this link will show some additional options

for how you wish your tags list to be displayed (see

Figure 2-23). Here you can choose to display your

tags as a cloud or a list; sort alphabetically or by

frequency; limit the displayed tags to ones that

are used only one, two, or five times; rename or

delete tags; and manage tag bundles. Since most

of these options wont make much sense until I

cover the tags list itself, Ill come back to these

options later.

Finally we come to the tags list itself. By default,it doesnt look like much, but much of the sortingpower of your bookmarks lies here. Figure 2-24shows my tags list, but all you can see is the Top 10

Tags. Clicking on any of these will take me to thepage for that tag. At the bottom of the list is a linkfor All Tags, which, when clicked, will show mea complete list of every tag Ive ever used in alpha-betical order. Since Ive used more than 1,100 tags,Figure 2-25 shows just an abbreviated version of this

list. As with the Top 10 Tags list, clicking on any ofthese tags will take me to the page for that tag.

Tag Options

Now that you have a basic grasp of the tag list, Figures

2-26 through 2-30 show you some of the differentways you can view this list based on the available tagoptions previously mentioned.

As you can see, you can use these options toview your tag list in many different ways. Of course,different views will seem more or less usable to dif-ferent people, so dont feel too discouraged if youthink that one of my examples doesnt seem veryhelpful. Chances are, someone else will find othersnot as useful as you do. Lets now take a look at theother tag options: rename, delete, and manage tag

bundles.

RENAMING TAGS

When you click the rename link under tag options,youll be presented with the Rename Tags inter-face as shown in Figure 2-31. Here you are asked to

Figure 2-23 Tag options


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28 Searching 2.0Figure 2-24 My Top 10 Tags

Figure 2-25 An abbreviated list of all of my tags


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29 Searching 2.0Figure 2-26 Tags viewed by frequency

as a list

Figure 2-27 Tags viewed by frequency

as a cloud

choose an existing tag from your tag list in the first

field and then enter a replacement tag in the secondfield. When you click the Save button any instanceof the tag in the first field will be replaced with thetag in the second field.

Here are two examples of how this could beused. First, lets say youre looking through yourtag list and notice that youve accidentally used thetag historu when you really meant history more thanonce. To correct this spelling error, just select historu

in the first field, enter history in the second, and

click Save. Another example was given to me byone of my students. In her case, she used tags basedon teacher names to group resources related to theclasses of particular teachers in her school. Duringone year she had bookmarks tagged MsSmith. WhenMs. Smith moved away and was replaced by Mr.Stevens, the student was easily able to retag all ofher MsSmith bookmarks with MrStevens using thisinterface.


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30 Searching 2.0Figure 2-28 Tags viewed alphabetically

as a cloud

Figure 2-29 Tags viewed alphabetically as a

list with a use threshold of five

DELETING TAGS

The Delete Tags screen, as shown in Figure 2-32,allows you to remove every instance of a particulartag. Just select the tag from the list and click theDelete button. Be aware that this does not removeany of the associated bookmarks, just the tag.

/D MANAGING TAG BUNDLES

Tag bundles do not seem to be useful to many peopleat first, but when you start adding a lot of bookmarks

to your account and in turn have many tags in your

account, they can help you more easily find the tagyoure seeking. You can even think of bundles as asort of folder system for tags. Lets take a look at whyI use tag bundles.

As you have seen in previous screenshots, I cur-rently have over 1,100 different tags associated withmy bookmarks. Even when theyre presented as analphabetical list, this list is almost prohibitively longwhen trying to find a particular tag. Additionally, one


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31 Searching 2.0

of the ways in which Ive used tagging is to create

a tag specific to each of the classes I teach so as toeasily point my students to a particular page for all ofthe online resources related to the classs topic. Eachof these tags starts with class-. So, I have tags suchas class-socialweb, class-xhtml, and class-wikis,justto name a few. Granted, alphabetically, all of thesetags will group together, but I need to scroll downseveral screens just to find them. This is where tagbundles can help.

Figure 2-33 shows the Manage Tag Bundlesscreen when you first get to it, having not previouslycreated any bundles. Clicking on the Create buttonwill bring you to the screen shown in Figure 2-34.Here I name the bundle and then either type in the

tags I want to include in this bundle or, more easily,choose them from the supplied list of my tags byclicking on the ones I wish to include. As I enter/choose tags, they will be highlighted on the screen,and a preview of the bundle will update along theright side of the window. Figure 2-35 shows how Ivefilled in this form. Once my bundle is complete, Iclick on the Save button and I am returned to theManage Tag Bundles page, which shows my onebundle (see Figure 2-36).

When I return to my bookmarks page, I see that

my tags list is now a little different. Instead of justthe Top 10 Tags and All Tags lists, I now have aBundles list. By clicking on my Classes bundle,I can see a list of just the tags contained within thatbundle. You are free to create as many bundles as youthink you need, and a tag may appear in as manydifferent bundles as necessary. For another example,lets say you have tags such as arthistory, ushistory,europeanhistory, musichistory, and localhistory.In thiscase, all of these history-related tags are nowhere nearone another in your tags list. In this case, a bundle

named history would do just the trick to bring themall together on the screen.

Now that weve got some links in your accountand can move around within them, lets take a lookat some of the more social aspects of Delicious.

People

The People button offers two choices: My Net-work and Go to a User. Since one is much easierto explain than the other, lets examine these inreverse order.

Go to a User

As shown in Figure 2-37, this is a very simple page.All you need to do is type in the username of a Deli-cious user and press Enter (or click the left arrow)and youll be sent to the public page of that user.

Unfortunately, as Im asked often by my students,there is no way to find a user based on his or herreal name. So, for example, if you dont know that

Figure 2-30 Tags viewed by frequency as a

cloud with a use threshold of five


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32 Searching 2.0Figure 2-31 The Rename Tags interface

Figure 2-32 The Delete Tags interface


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33 Searching 2.0Figure 2-33 Manage tag bundles

Figure 2-34 Create a tag bundle


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34 Searching 2.0Figure 2-35 The highlighted tag bundle form


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35 Searching 2.0Figure 2-36 Manage Tag Bundles page showing my new bundle

Figure 2-37 Go to a user page


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36 Searching 2.0my username is travelinlibrarian,theres no way tofind my public page within Delicious. So, yes, youneed to ask people if they have an account and whattheir username is.

My NetworkFor those of you who are already familiar with theconcept of friends in systems such as Facebook orMySpace, Deliciouss network is very similar. To addsomeone to your network all you need to know ishis or her username. Just select My Network fromthe People menu and then click Add a user toNetwork. To the right a box will appear in whichyou enter a username and click the Add button.Once done, this user will be added to your network(see Figure 2-38). So, just what are the benefits of

doing this? There are two of them.The first is that you can easily track the newbookmarks that the user has added to his or her ac-

count. Once you have other users in your network,when you select My Network from the Peoplemenu, youll be presented with a list of bookmarksthat have been recently added by those in your net-work, as shown in Figure 2-39.

The second benefit to adding individuals to yournetwork is the ability to send them bookmarks thatyou think might interest them. Now when you adda new bookmark, the previously mentioned Peopletab will contain the list of users in your network. Allyou need to do to send someone a copy of this book-mark is to select his or her name and afor:usernametag will automatically be added, as shown in Figure2-40. Once you save the new link, it will appear inhis or her inbox. (I discuss the inbox in moredetail later in this chapter.)

Once your library has an account, you canencourage your users not only to create their ownDelicious accounts but to add the library to their

Figure 2-38 My network with one user


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37 Searching 2.0Figure 2-39 Recent bookmarks from members of my network

network, and then you can solicit resources fromthem for the library to consider adding to its accountfor the benefit of all of the librarys users.

Tags

The Tags menu has three choices: My Tags, MySubscriptions, and Explore. Lets see what thesechoices offer.

My Tags

Opening the My Tags page will, by default, showyou an alphabetical tag cloud of your 200 most usedtags, each one hyperlinked to that tags page. Usingthe links at the top of the cloud, you can choose to

show all of your tags instead of just the top 200 andyou can switch from an alphabetical sort to a By sizesort. Figures 2-41 through 2-44 show examples ofthese different views.

My Subscriptions

My Network is where you can track all new book-marks from a particular user. My Subscriptionsis where you can track all new bookmarks with a

particular tag, or, more specifically, you can trackall new bookmarks with a particular tag from a par-ticular user. The first time you go to the Subscrip-

tions page, youll see a brief introduction to how itworks. Click on the Add a subscription button toget to the Manage Subscriptions page, as shownin Figure 2-45.

Once here you have two choices: add a new tagsubscription or add a new tag for a specific usersubscription.

Add a new tag subscription:

This is the field to use if you wish to know of any

new bookmark added by any user that is assigned

a specific tag. For example, if youre really inter-ested in Abraham Lincoln, you could subscribe

to the tag abrahamlincoln. You may also want to

subscribe to the tag abraham lincoln (quotes

included) for users who assign tags that include

spaces. (If your tag contains spaces and you dont

include the quotation marks, your words will be

interpreted as multiple single-word tags instead

of one multiword tag )

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Searching 2.0 Chapter 2 Sample