Log 1

Delicious

When I discovered that part of the course required me to use Delicious (a social bookmarking web service founded by Joshua Schachter in 2003, acquired by Yahoo! In 2005), I was at first reluctant. I had no previous experience of using Delicious or any similar programs and knew nothing about it. However, once I visited the homepage, I soon found it would be a very useful tool and that it was easy to use.

The major benefit of using Delicious is that I could share my resources with other people on the site, and likewise I could use other people’s findings to help me develop a broader repertoire of knowledge on certain subjects relevant to my investigation. Using “Tags” organises and clearly labels the topics covered in each posting. For example, I read an article in Equity Magazine which contained an interview with the artistic director of the Actors Centre, and so I added Tags to the article such as, Equity, acting, Actors Centre, CPD, acting classes. Then when someone searched for any of the topics covered in the Tags, it would direct them to the article.

I wish I had known about Delicious in the first module so that I could have utilised this programme throughout my research over the past year. I would suggest that all first year students begin using it immediately. I find it extremely useful to look at my list of resources on Delicious regularly to remind myself of relevant articles I found a while ago which I may have forgotten about.

I intend to use Delicious for personal use once I have finished the course, to keep a record of useful resources which I find on the internet. These may be job recruitment websites, information about acting classes, interesting articles on careers, etc. Delicious will then enable me to discover other related information through the network of other Delicious users who choose to share their findings on the website.