I possibly have the worst memory of anyone I have ever met. I find myself immediately forgetting things. For example, the sunblock I meant to bring with me to the park on Sunday. As soon as I opened the bathroom door to retrieve it, I was immediately distracted by a stray towel or a speck of dust or a ray of light or...who knows. Let's just say my boyfriend and I are nursing some pretty uncomfortable sunburns (sorry Tyler!)
Although I haven't experimented with social tagging much, I can see how useful it could be for someone like me. It would help me to easily retrieve a site organized by my own specific language, or by reminders from others' tags. (I must confess that when I find a cool site, I often forget to bookmark it!) I see how helpful the bookmarking sites can be for librarians and educators too, who generally work with a variety of sites and sources and need help organizing them for easily access.
As the article posted on Sakai mentioned, social tagging has become popular for introducing people to new sites. When URI changed the HELIN catalog to Encore, the only thing I liked about the new site was the tags and tag clouds that could direct you to more sources that shared similar tags, helping to narrow your search without having to use the subject headings. I see the tags incorporated into the catalog as extremely helpful to students who are typically more familiar with keyword searching as opposed to controlled language.
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