The Deliciousness of Social Bookmarking

As I talked about in my last post, social bookmarking, or the tagging and sharing of links among members of a network, has become a mainstream practice.  The other day, I finally succumbed to the trend and decided to give the four-little-square site (or, the site formerly known as del.icio.us) a try.

In keeping with the technical communication theme I seem to have going these days, I've decided to, at least for the foreseeable future, limit my bookmarks to those that pertain to the field in some way.  I hope that, if you ever decided to join my Delicious network, you would find my bookmarks to be of interest to you, as well.

If all goes well with the code, you should be able to see a link offering you the opportunity to join my network:


Because the tags applied by users are not standardized in any way and could very well be relevant only to the individuals who create them, one is left to wonder if folksonomy/social bookmarking is a "democratic taxonomy that allows the community to peer review the content of the Web" or "a disorganized collection of personal preferences."  I believe that it has the potential to be both: on a macro level, it's almost certainly the former, but on a micro level, it can indeed be the latter. 

Since every user gets a "homepage" listing all of his or her bookmarks and their tags, users can, if they so choose, create tags and categories that only make sense to them.  For example, if I want to keep track of all links relevant to a research paper I'm working on, I can tag those links "paper," regardless of whether or not those sites have any content directly related to "paper" as conceptualized by the rest of the world.  Therefore, if someone who didn't know what I was working on looked at my list of links and (micro-level) tags and didn't have any prior knowledge of how social bookmarking "works," that person may conclude that social bookmarks are "a disorganized collection of personal preferences."  However, as Prof. Ken Ronkowitz explains in a podcast called "Web 2.0 for Designers," the tags applied to the collective list of links on a social-bookmarking site are based on which tags are the most commonly used to describe those links.  Thus, the tags that would be relevant only to me would be "pushed to the bottom" and would not be reflected in the site's public (i.e., macro-level) tags.

Because there are no rules governing tags, a group/network could agree on a tag that would be used to designate links that are relevant to its members.  In this way, social bookmarking can be used to share links among colleagues or classmates.  This method of gathering and sharing links can be particularly useful when group members are collaborating on a project and will be using the same resources, and that usefulness is compounded when they are not working together in a single location.

A handout on social bookmarking (which, incidentally, is included in my list of Delicious bookmarks) published by the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative also points out that social bookmarking can, over time, transform how we think about and find information: "Tagging information resources with keywords has the potential to change how we store and find information. It may become less important to know and remember where information was found and more important to know how to retrieve it using a framework created by and shared with peers and colleagues. Social bookmarking simplifies the distribution of reference lists, bibliographies, papers, and other resources among peers or students."

That handout from EDUCAUSE is just one of the eight sites that I currently have bookmarked on Delicious.  Here's a screenshot showing you the rest:

 (have you been to any of these?)

The short descriptions that I wrote for each site describe why I think they might be relevant to those in the field of technical communication.  In particular, I wanted to include sites that provided a quick reference for certain topics, like usability and proposal writing, that may be germane to a professional technical communicator's work.  Through these sites, users can get the specific information they need about a topic, without having to delve deeply into it.  I also included several sites that can have very practical, immediate uses, particularly with regard to web design.  Web design can seem overwhelming to beginners and those who don't design or maintain sites on a regular basis, so I wanted to collect links that could make the process seem a little less daunting.

My favorite link so far has to be the Colormatch Remix Color Scheme Tool.  It takes away some of the mystery behind how colors work together, and it gives you the hex and RGB codes for the color you create/designate and some coordinating colors.  Give it a try!

Here's a sample color scheme:

(pretty cool, huh?)

If you come up with any cool color schemes (or find any other interesting technical communication sites), feel free to post them.