Don’t hide your social bookmarks! October 18, 2006

I can’t find the links to Lansing Public Library’s del.icio.us bookmarks on their home page, but it looks like they have some well-monitored and defined categories (black_history). LaGrange Park Public Library’s del.icio.us account is a little sparse in comparison and no large theme jumps out at me. I think a library’s del.icio.us account would best serve the patrons if it had a clear purpose, or at least a theme every few months, for example ‘library month’ could be a theme for a while and then ‘black history month’ and so on.

MCC library’s homepage is clean, pretty and has some very interesting content. I think it’s great how they’re displaying the newest links from their del.icio.us account on the homepage, and even though the links don’t appear to have any theme (as I requested above) I think it works since it just looks so good there (love the graphics). One issue I can see is that some of their link titles don’t give me a good idea of the item’s content, and while this is the fault of how the pages are titled, they can change the titles in their del.icio.us account to include a further description. Another issue is that I have no indication that I will navigate away from their website by selecting any of the bulleted del.icio.us links. I think it’s always good webdesign practice to let people know if they are navigating away from your content. It is now taken for granted that people know ’suggested links’ means you will be navigating away, but since many patrons will not know what del.icio.us is they will not know where they are going when they select a del.icio.us link. It would help further if they added a ‘what is del.icio.us’ page and stuck a link to it right beside ‘we’re using del.icio.us’.

The University of Pennsylvania’s PennTags is a very interesting idea and one which I imagine many librarys will not have the resources (time, money, expertise!) to duplicate - but it is fascinating to see a University launching their own del.icio.us. I imagine they have gained the autonomy of page design and a some marketing ground by creating this themselves, but I think that the good news for smaller (or more broke) libraries is that the biggest benefits of social bookmarking can still be had through a simple del.icio.us account. I also see that users wouldn’t get lost in the general del.icio.us community with no way back, either. Let me know what other benefits you see!

I can’t find the RSS feed for the Thomas Ford Memorial Library’s delicious account on their homepage, but I think what is special about their account is that they have a link to themselves up top next to the del.icio.us/thomasford/. Looking back, Lansing Public Library is the only other one that has this. Such a simple marketing/navigation tool to bring patrons back to your site.