Del.icio.us?

I'm registered with digg, which is kind of similar to del.icio.us in a sense, except instead of sharing websites, you're sharing stories and ranking stories in terms of popularity. With that in mind I thought del.icio.us would be similarity structure with familiar features.

However after viewing Cleveland and Sutherland Shire Library del.icio.us accounts, I was taken aback on the low readability of the website. I had difficulty adjusting to the way the information/websites were presented.

In the initial viewing it looked completely unstructured with just a list of websites based on a subject matter. Save this and save by 1 other person features just added to the confusion. It probably didn't help that I didn't completely comprehend the full functionalities of tag clouds, and that in addition to how it appears, with related words all grouped together, I also did not realise that size and boldness of fonts relayed certain information about the subject matter .

**I wiki-ed tag clouds and discovered that tags clouds can also be presented according to different categories such as alphabetical, weight, random order plus more.

I was relieved that Cleveland Public Library have an 'connect to' webpage which structures subject into alphabetical order, clicking on a subject will take you straight to the listing of websites for the selected topic. This would assist those not familiar with delicious and would enable them to make the most of the website.

After saying all that I'm sure it will probably require time and practice before I'm comfortable with the functionality of delicious, and the benefits of it will outweigh my initial impressions.

As Sharon Morris listed in her notes, why do we need it. There's much to gain from utiltising what is essentially a free tool, especially when it enables shared knowledge, and the minimising of repetitive Internet searching for individuals.

I would like our library to create something similar to what Cleveland Public Library has accomplished.