I'm giving del.icio.us a twirl around the dance floor, and I like what I see.
For background on social bookmarking, visit the this informative document:
http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7001.pdf
It's a great overview, which means that I am just going to add my personal thoughts.
The number one reason for me using it is that I can tag. This means that if I have an article on assessing the quality of portfolios, I can put all those key words in as tags.
So, in three weeks when I am looking for links on portfolios, all I have to do is to type "portfolio" in my search and the links with that tag will pop up. Of course, the down side is that if I type in "quality" I'm going to get this article too.
If i add another identifier, I still get all of the same links, but the order of the links displayed changes to put the link with both tags on top.
Sharing would have to be the second reason for using del.icio.us. I am hoping that as the ELI site becomes more mature, I'll be able to look up what others in the organization have bookmarked. It will save me time for searching. Will I miss something because some one used a tag I did not? Probably, but when I do a search on the "cost of course delivery" in Google, I get 17,000,000 responses. I anticipate finding helpful information that is tailored to higher education and technology. The likely hood of getting a good match is increased when you go to an individuals page. At this point, you can see their list of tags. The list will guide you in your choice of search words.
I've still got lots to learn about del.icio.us, but I think it's worth my time and effort. Please take a moment to see what I've posted. I am working my way through my large bookmark file and transferring and tagging them, so I'll have new stuff every week.
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