A few months ago, I created a del.icio.us account and starting weeding through bookmarks and favorites stored in my Web browsers and transferring those of value to the online social bookmarking site. The advantages of doing this are that through the Internet I can save, access, and share Web site bookmarks from virtually anywhere.

Another advantage is the use of tagging to organize the saved sites. Tags are keywords that describe the Web site. When I bookmark sites, del.icio.us provides a list of tags that I have used in the past and also suggests tags that other social bookmarkers have used. For instance, when I bookmarked BibMe, a Web site that creates bibliographies, I tagged it "Web2.0," "APA," "citations," "reference," "bibliography," "tools," "research," and "writing."

The list of tags can be viewed in a tag cloud. Looking at my tag cloud, I can see which tags I use more often, because the more Web sites associated with a tag, the larger the font and darker the font color. Using the tag cloud, I am working to improve my tagging system. One fault of tagging is that synonyms and variatants of words are recognized as different tags. For instance, "tool" and "tools" are separate tags; if I view Web sites tagged with "tool," those tagged with "tools" will not be included (unless they are tagged with both keywords). I will most likely decide to use one tag or the other, instead of continue to use both.