Delicious Has A New Home

Big news - Delicious has been sold, and the new owners sound great.

This announcement came last week (along with an email to every Delicious user), but it hasn't made much of a splash. I've seen a few posts in the library world, but I am surprised* it hasn't been bigger news.

Press releases about the transition were released by both Delicious and the new owners, AVOS (the guys who founded of YouTube), and the future does sound promising: AVOS is apparently hiring staff, plans to work with the Delicious community, and intends to develop new features. Pretty significant for a product that hasn't changed in years.

Delicious users have until July 2011 to opt-in to transitioning to the new platform. I did it this weekend, and it's quick and easy - just log in, verify your details (and at least skim the new terms of service and privacy policy), and you're set.

Here's the message that displays when you begin the transition:

Delicious is moving to a new home

Yahoo! is excited to announce that Delicious has been acquired by the founders of YouTube, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen. As creators of the largest online video platform, they have firsthand experience enabling millions of users to share their experiences with the world. Delicious will become part of their new Internet company, AVOS.

To continue using Delicious, you must agree to let Yahoo! transfer your bookmarks to AVOS.

Reasons to let Yahoo! transfer your bookmarks

As soon as you let Yahoo! move your Delicious account, you will:

• Enjoy uninterrupted use of Delicious.
• Keep your Delicious account and all your bookmarks.
• Keep the same look and feel of Delicious as you have today, and enjoy future innovations for the product.

It's easy to have Yahoo! move your account to AVOS. When you do, you will be subject to the AVOS terms of service and privacy policy.

What happens if you do not move your bookmarks?

• Delicious in its current form will be available until approximately July 2011.
• After that, you will no longer be able to use your existing Delicious account and will not have access to your existing bookmarks or account information.

Learn more >>

I, for one, am happy about this announcement - yay for not having to rework the library's subject guides.

*This surprises me because, of all the online tools out there, Delicious seems tailor-made for librarians. Even discounting the social part, bookmarking sites like this are exactly what librarians have been striving to do since the internet was invented - catalog it. Delicious (and similar sites) not only lets us catalog websites how we see fit, but also allows the power of critical mass to categorize every website. It seems like library schools across the land should have an entire course dedicated to Delicious (and social bookmarking).

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Great Book Cover and Bookmarks

Speaking of creative bookmarks, I love these combination custom book covers/bookmarks:

Similarly, last year our Children's Librarian started pulling books that she felt were good, but had misleading or unexciting covers, and had kids design their own covers. That's a great idea, and it's fun to take great ideas just a little bit further.

Yay for activities that involves patrons and lets them take more ownership of their library use.

via LISNews

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Example of Direct Advertising

A patron asked for help finding books on Taoism, so we walked over to the Religion section. As we were flipping through the index of books in the 294's and 299.514, I noticed something odd - many of the books we picked up all had bookmarks in them.

It's not uncommon for people to leave bookmarks in library books. But in this case, all of the bookmarks were identical - they were all business cards for a local yoga studio. Interesting. After I finished helping the patron, I went to the 613.7's, and sure enough - all our yoga how-to books also had these business cards tucked in them.

I dislike businesses targeting patrons, and in fact it's against our library policies, but I did think this approach was clever (although I shudder to think whose business card would end up in the 613.96's).

It also reminded me of a library tactic I fail to use effectively: put promotional bookmarks in books. It's a great way to drive traffic to your subscription databases, online subject guides, special programs, or general announcements, but it's also tough to maintain.

But too, this book-based advertising could be used as a fundraiser for libraries. Local business could donate money to purchase books on a certain topic, and in exchange they'd get a label on the book saying it was donated by them. Libraries would be able to expand collections, and perhaps also charge these businesses a fee on top of that.

This last idea is of course a terrible one. But the one before that is legitimate, really. And for another interesting library/business idea, check out Brett's idea for "Amazon Libraries."

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AllMyFaves (Are Belong To Us)

Someone sent me a link to AllMyFaves.com recently - at first I ignored it, but now I kind of like it.

It's a visual list of popular website, broken up into cataegories like Video, Maps, Search, Travel, etc. It reminds me of the early days of Yahoo, with two guys making a directory of useful internet websites. But seeing everything on one screen is helpful (and being a visual person, I like the logos).

And that's it's compiled by "a team of experts," I can reasonably presume that these are the "important" websites in each category (at least, important to someone). Which is great for me to learn of a new website, or to use as a cheat-sheet to see what the kids are using. Plus, it helps with reference questions like "what's another website like Facebook and MySpace."

I did notice they didn't have a "Books" category, so I made my own:

Books

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Found Bookmarks

This is worth repeating: Kate over on Adventures in Library Land highlighted an AbeBooks article that listed a few examples of things that were found in used books:

• Forty $1,000 bills
• Piece of bacon
• Credit cards
• Valuable baseball cards
• A diamond ring

I'm sure most libraries have a collection of odd things, too - just this week I found a Pokémon card (in a book about dealing with bullying). I tend to use receipts myself, or whatever random scrap of paper is handy at the time. Perhaps there should be a Where's George?-like program for bookmarks, too.

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