Most case studies this week were of the use of del.icio.us to save bookmarks of interest—this gives patrons easy access to resources above and beyond the library’s collection.
The tag clouds show how extensive the tagging of each library is so far—La Grange Public Library’s cloud was quite restricted but I did notice that “LocalHistory” retrieved interesting links. The links were well tagged on the whole. The Sedovia Library’s tags demonstrated the difficulties of trying to restrict the tag to only one word. They ended up using tags such as “for.public” and “computer.use” as well as tags from words strung together “internetsafety”. Because tags were created by staff (it seems this way but the persons doing the tagging are not identified), tagging was consistent. This would not be the case if tagging were open to patrons as well.
The route to the del.icio.us pages was only clear in the case of Maui Community College Library website, where there is a del.cio.us link on the “About” page. The tagging subjects on the community college cloud impressed me as they are more serious and academic.
PennTags is different—and the richness of this site is incredible! I found I was not just retrieving catalogue material from Pennsylvania University, but also retrieving web pages, video tutorials, lectures, projects…. In fact, when you click on a link, you are not quite sure what media is going to appear! PennTags acts as a repository of the varied interests and academic pursuits of the Penn community. Anyone in the community can add resources and tags. PennTags describes itself accurately as a “discovery tool”, and is an exciting resource. It's appearance is so much more interesting than the bland presentation of a del.icio.us screen.
