Do you del.icio.us?

By Marjorie Brekke, Librarian I

The Rapid City Public Library has a del.icio.us new resource. It is not a food or drink, but it still is something enjoyable, the RCPL del.icio.us website: http://del.icio.us/rcpl. Perhaps you have heard of del.icio.us. Don’t let the extra periods trip you up—it’s pronounced just like the word delicious, but it’s a resource where you can store and organize your favorite websites as personalized bookmarks similar to what your web browser does, only much better, and with the added bonus of being able to access them from any computer with internet access.

You can also share your bookmarks with other people so that they can see your favorite websites, and in turn they can save links for you in del.icio.us. You can see what other people have bookmarked and how many other del.icio.us members have saved a particular website in their accounts.  You can add other del.icio.us users to your network, and you can even have fans of your del.icio.us page.

In addition, if you find one del.icio.us user shares your taste in websites or if you discover a user who you find quite brilliant, you can subscribe to an RSS (short for Really Simple Syndication) feed on their del.icio.us page. Every time they add a new website to their page, you will be alerted. That way you can keep up to date on your favorite topics without having to scour the internet yourself for the best websites.

One of the most helpful features of del.icio.us is that you can “tag” your websites with keywords so you can organize and search for websites in a more efficient manner. For example, if you have many websites that you consult for health information, you can tag those websites in del.icio.us with the keyword “health.” When you want to quickly find your favorite websites on health information, you can go to your del.icio.us account and click on the “health” tag and get a listing of all of those sites.  You can also sort them according to more specific terms, like “children’s health” or “allergies”.  This makes the ocean of online information a lot easier to navigate.

Tags are more helpful than sorting bookmarks into folders because you can give a website as many tags as you prefer. You might not always think of the same keyword for a website, but with tags, you can look under many relevant tags for one particular website. For example, you could tag the Rapid City Public Library website with the following tags: library, books, DVD, audiobooks, resources, classes, stories and computer. The next time you are searching for the Library website, you have multiple ways to find it because it can be categorized in many different ways.

With del.icio.us, you can view tags in a list or in a tag cloud. Tag clouds display information in a format that indicates the popularity of certain tags. Tags with larger and darker font have been used more frequently than smaller, lighter tags. Tag clouds can be organized alphabetically or by frequency of use. If a tag cloud is not appealing to you, tags can be arranged in a list with numbers indicating how many times each tag has been used.

Now, this might sound like a lot of work.  That’s why staff members at the Rapid City Public Library have been working hard sorting through websites to research and verify their content before adding them to the Library’s del.icio.us account and tagging them in ways that will make your search for information much easier.

Looking for driver’s license manuals?  Click on the word “manuals” and you’ll find a helpful list of electronic resources we have identified that fit that criteria, including standard, commercial, hazardous materials and motorcycle manuals.  Since the information is collected and organized by the Library, you can have a level of confidence that what you’ll find is what you’ll need.

Our tags are collected in bundles so that all tags having to do with one particular subject are grouped in one “tag cloud”.  For example, all of the education tags are in one bundle, while the health and medicine tags are in another bundle. Be sure to check out the RCPL del.icio.us page for helpful websites on a variety of topics.  The library is constantly adding new resources, so try us out.     

If you are interested in learning more about how to use del.icio.us, attend one of the del.icio.us clinics at the Rapid City Public Library on Saturday, August 18 and Wednesday, August 22. Be prepared to have fun and learn a lot about how to set up a del.icio.us account and store and categorize your favorite websites. Soon you will be asking your friends and family, “Do you del.icio.us?”