Using del.icio.us

As with most of the new generation of web tools (web 2.0), del.icio.us' success for you as a tool depends on tagging - adding multiple descriptive words to an item. Here is selection of quotes from a discussion of tagging books, on Librarything.com:

"One of the things I find most fascinating about tagging is what it reveals about the cognitive processes of the taggers. What makes one person tag Walden with "simplicity" and another person with "hermits"? It's not a novel observation that we all experience books (for example) personally or subjectively. Tagging is a very simple way to turn that individual experience into universal information. (johnascott)"

"I'm always amazed at the different ways of viewing something when I see how differently others tagged something to which I have already assigned the most 'correct' or 'appropriate' tags. (bobngail)"

"I think the main point to remember is that tagging is NOT JUST an unstructured form of subject headings; it is a completely different way of viewing the world. Taxonomies and standardised subject heading vocab divide knowledge hierarchically according to set rules. Folksonomies allow knowledge to emerge through collaborative involvement. Tagging allows people to look at books in new ways, to share that knowledge, and to create tag clouds so that no one tag gets missed. (mrsradcliffe)"

"Tagging is getting awfully close, it seems, to the way our brains naturally work anyway - it "associates" and "retrieves" based on miscellaneous tags it has (subconsciously) attached to the idea or concept. (nicknich3)"

(You might be interested in seeing the LibraryThing page for Singapore's United World College PYP Library. Look at their tag cloud, and their tag mirror (which expands the cloud to include other people's related tags).