After viewing the Green Library Delicious page at Stanford University, I also had different views to LibrarianGoddess and couldn't understand her excitement about it; this was initially due to the security warning message, because clicking on yes brought up the page to the right. Here you were unable to click on the tags or search bookmarks, so I was completely confused.... 
....that is until manic clicking produced a tag cloud (pictured left), which I couldn't return to, after choosing one of the options! From then on my views changed. The Green Library Delicious tag cloud, is user friendly, if a little overwhelming, with all the words. I liked the visual searching aspect, which allowed for easy access to information.
As LibrarianGoddess says, the main advantage of Delicious, is being able to access bookmarks anywhere, which is especially useful if you need to login to the library or university website first to see the library links and have forgotten your password or the web site is down! So I love this remote access aspect of retrieving useful websites, which a lot of students may struggle with, for many reasons.
In conclusion, I liked being able to search for bookmarks via keywords, sorry tags! and thought that once you had got used to how it worked, it was definitely better than searching google, as you could add new tags into your search to narrow down results. If used through the library, it does allow you to have a certain control aspect over choosing suitable sites to bookmark, as well as providing a tag list to bundle similar sites together.
Interesting assessment of Delicious. But I'm fascinated to know the kinds of bookmarks that you think would be useful for the students? I genuinely couldn't think of any. :)
ReplyDeleteLinks to websites that we would normally direct students to, I think all access points are useful as everyone learns in a different way and uses different media. Take all our differing points of view, likes and dislikes of the web 2.0 tools, as an example. One method doesn't work for everyone.
ReplyDeleteHaving also had lots of students on courses based in Ireland, Singapore and Mumbai, the fact that they can create and share this themselves, would be good. Supporting long distance students can be difficult at the best of times, especially with access issues.