Just suppose you could access your bookmarks wherever you are and share them with others. Well you can : by using a free web service called delicious. Once you have set up your account with delicious you can bookmark sites of interest, give them subject tags and then access them via the web wherever you are!
Not only that : you can access bookmarks on subjects of interest that others have bookmarked on delicious. It's an incredibly powerful storage tool and also a searchable database that some say can rival Google.
Getting started
Create your delicious account by going to the web site delicious.
Keep a note of your password and user name.
You can edit your public profile at any time, putting in as much or as little as you like : e.g. your real name, e-mail and web site.
How to save bookmarks
There are several ways :
When you are using a University computer you should first go to delicious and sign in so that you can go to your book marks and add new ones. Minimise this window : open up another web browser window and begin your searching. When you find a page you want to book mark, highlight and copy it,Open up your saved delicious page and click on the Save a new bookmark tab.This will provide you with a form onto which you can copy and paste the URL of the page you want to bookmark. Then you can add the title and up tp 1000 characters of description. It is entirely up to you how much you put in the description : I suggest you keep this short and use it for something that would identify the article.What is it about? Is there something special about it? Then you add the tags. These are subject keywords. Often you can get ideas from how others have tagged it, by scrolling down to the tags tab and using these. As you build up your tags you will build up your own preferred terms.If you want to keep your bookmark private, then you should click the private box.
If you are making lots of bookmarks it will make sense to set up delicious buttons on the browser of your own computer or laptop. Go through the help section on delicious about setting these up. There is a section "Quick Tour for Firefox add-on" or "Quick Tour for Internet Explorer add-on" This will create 2 buttons on the top bar of your browser. The delicious logo button gives you access to all your book and the tag button opens up the form so you can add a new bookmark.
Controlling your Bookmarks
The following video, "Social Bookmarking in Plain English" from Common Craft with Lee LeFever, is an excellent introduction to why you should use social bookmarking and delicious in particular. Bear in mind that the demonstration presumes that you have set up the delicious buttons on your browser.
