Week 6 #13

Obviously I jumped the gun when I discussed del.icio.us several entries back during Thing #11 and award winning sites. I admitted I just got things organized and tagged by dealing with my "favorites" on a couple of computers. What I have gone back and done is spent additional time searching the "popular" and "recent" categories and exploring what others have tagged or noted as worthwhile. It is certainly an idea but the individuals tag makes all the difference. Also, I tried the term "school library" with the parentheses to see if the search engine would stop using single word tags. It did not. So I got educational results and I got library results but I did not get school library results necessarily. Please guide me in the search process if you have insights.
There is no doubt that del.icio.us can help me speed things up in the library. When a teacher pops in and tells me that they are getting ready to start their "decades" project I am ready. When the class arrives, I simply open my del.icio.us acct. go to the tag "decades" and I can demo any sites that I have. I immediately know if the sites are still active and appropriate. I can quickly drop those in to a doc. that can be printed and sent home to parents. I used to maintain documents for these projects and I had to check sites before I handed it out for the current year. Also, I had to review my favorites for any additional sites I may have added during the year that did not get pasted on to the document. Yes, I know they can be added to an online resource page too but somehow people want that paper in their hand.


When I look at sites like Library Thing my status as a librarian imposter is cemented further. While it was fun to explore and enter in some of my own titles, I failed to grasp the concept for a while. Finally I realized this was something akin to my spousal unit asking me to "organize" his DVD collection. UHHH... I organize things and facilitate use of those things for a living. I'm content to live with chaos. Do I really care that he owns the movie "Hell Boy" and needs to find it quickly or would like to watch something else like it? You guess. The books in my life are in stacks. When I get to that stack, I read the books. If I need to find a particular book, we hope for the best and that the dog has not knocked that particular stack into another stack that might confuse my memory. I lend books, I trade books in, I leave books behind on trips, my daughter flagrantly steals my books, there is no blooming way my "catalog" would be correct. I am far better off just plugging in a recently enjoyed title and looking for similar tags in case my stacks have gotten low and it is time to replenish with new stacks. And another thing! What I read is like my SSN, I don't just share that information with anybody. My account would have had to be labeled private anyway. Have you caught on yet that I am a neurotic conspiracy theorist?