The article on tagging in our resource list was interesting. The ability of the creator/author to chose which tags to use is certainly part of the Web 2.0 philosophy. However, the Wikipedia article mentioned a drawback: there is really no information about the meaning or semantics of a tag. I can see that this could be a problem and lead to "false hits" as the selection of tag terms is not uniform and very individualized. On the other hand, the use of a more natural language than that used in traditional cataloging (LC for example) often makes it easier for people to search.
Del.icio.us was pretty overwhelming (in a good way!) This site is another example of a powerful collaborative/social networking tool, and I can see that it would be useful for those of us who use both their home computer and work computer as we could access favorite links from any computer on the web. We could synchronize bookmarks. I found it interesting as a social bookmark manager, where one can post favorite sites to one's personal collection of links and categorize with tags that are easy to remember, then share bookmarks.
The use in libraries was pretty impressive. I liked the idea of the collaborative use mentioned in the tutorial. The researcher was able to share her work with colleagues-this is a pretty elegant way to work virtually and collaborate. Again, I can see this tool being used to bookmark links for homework assignments (and it would be cool for students to add tags).
I liked the "Seven habits of Wildly Successful del.icio.us Users" article. One point was to be really liberal in the use of tags, but to "clean them up" once in a while. Sigh. We even have to "weed" in the virtual world! The author of the article also mentioned viewing what others are bookmarking to find interesting bookmarks. A much quicker way to find sites of interest than doing a google search.
Again, this is tool that will need much more exploration. I am going try and set up an account at work.
