Delicious review

Delicious describes itself as a 'collaborative repository' where people can 'discover, remember and share'. The 'live' or online nature of this application ensures its portability whilst also giving it the ability to quickly and easily impart self managed resources to online social communities and other interested information seekers. Incorporating Web 2.0 by sharing through other social network applications such as twitter, face book, email and its own Delicious network, it enables the wide dissemination of commendatory web content, combating the inherent problem of information overload associated with the perpetual growth of web content.

Qualifying it as a folksonomy along with other social media sites such as YouTube and Flikr is the use of tags created by the user to describe, file and retrieve information. The emphasis on self creation as opposed to selecting descriptors from an existing controlled vocabulary, reflects modern expectation of users to participate, interact and engage with resources.

Folksonomy has been criticised by many for among other things, its lack of formality and consistency, however, the nature of Delicious being a personal access and sharing tool for an indefinite amount of content, accuracy and consistency can be incorporated by consensus and personal preference and inaccurate tagging has less of an impact on accessibility. Folksonomy in this form can be influential on the more formal taxonomies as it provides insights into developing language trends.

Although there has been criticism of folksonomies, Delicious continues in popularity due to its ability to make social connections and its effective organisation of web resources for individuals and groups of people with common interests. It is another way in which social networks can be expanded and new connections made whilst access is increased and encouraged.

Libraries and information agencies such as the State Library of NSW and university libraries have incorporated Delicious into their collections to link users with their information requirements. In some cases such as the Ann Arbour Library resources within the library catalogue have used folksonomy to create wider access along with more traditional cataloguing. Although taxonomy still has its place, social bookmarking sites such as Delicious are gaining in popularity with information professionals and users within the information environment.




References:

Miller, P. (2009) Stephanie Lemieux talks about folksonomy and taxonomy in the enterprise. Nodalities Blog: from semantics web to web data. accessed 25/7/2010 from http//blogs.talis.com/nodalities/2009/06/stephanie-lemieux-talks-about-folksonomy-and-taxonomy-in-the-enterprise.php


Steele, T. (2009) The New Cooperative cataloguing. Library Hi Tech. 27 (1), 68-77.