Tagging and Social Networking with Books

I recently discovered Library Thing, an online service to help people catalog their books.

Here are some of the features of Library Thing:

• You add books by searching Amazon and other libraries.
• You can use Library Thing to find people with similar libraries and get suggestions from people with your interests.
• You can also add tags to your books and find books by tags. (just like del.icio.us and Flickr)
• You can learn more about a user by clicking on their user profile.

There are so many more features about this website. To find out more about Library Thing, check out About Library Thing .

Some questions to think about:

• How can web designers/technologists use Library Thing?
• How can educators use Library Thing?
• How can non-profits use Library Thing?

4Teachers.org

4Teachers.org has great tools for educators to use.

Tools:

• TrackStar - Educators can use this site to create online lessons by collecting websites to create a track. You can also search the database of tracks by keywords, subjects, and grades.
• RubiStar - Educators can create rubrics and search for already made rubrics.
• Web Worksheet Wizard - Educators can create a simple webpage and search for already made webpages.

How Nonprofits Can Use Social Bookmarking and Blogs

I recently started thinking about how nonprofits can find people interested in their issue and organization by using social bookmarking and blogs.

Social Bookmarking using del.icio.us

A nonprofit can use social bookmarking by bookmarking their organization site, blogs, and other related sites about their issue. Then they can see if any users have already bookmarked their sites and what tags they use. From there they can view a tag stream to find new resources.

Example:


I bookmarked the American Red Cross website on del.icio.us. There are 48 others who bookmarked this website. I then click on where it says 48 other people. It takes me to the following page.




If I look on the right, I can see a list of the most popular tags used to tag the American Red Cross website. These tags include charity, donate, disaster, relief, hurricane, volunteer, katrina, health, nonprofit, reference, education, aid, medicine, and emergency. I could then click on each of these tags and find more bookmarks with these tags.

If I scroll down the page, I can look at each user and see what they tagged for the American Red Cross. I can also click on each user and see what other bookmarks they saved and the tags they use.

Some users include a link to their website on the top of their user page. If users provide a link to a website, I can learn more about them. If you have a website or blog (or any other site), I encourage you to include that in your user information so it will show up in your user page.


Social bookmarking can help nonprofits in many ways. By bookmarking blogs, blog entries, and nonprofit websites, nonprofits can see how many people bookmark a site. They can also see who is interested in their nonprofit or topic.


Blogs and Technorati

In addition to social bookmarking, nonprofits can search blogs to see who is writing about them or a particular topic.

For example, I want to find out what blogs mention the American Red Cross. I go to technorati , and click search. I then put in "American Red Cross", and I get the following screen.



30, 171 blogs/blog entries mention the American Red Cross.

I can then go through the list and look at these blogs. I can comment on them and contact these bloggers.


Now I want to find out what blogs link to the American Red Cross website. On technorati I put www.redcross.com in the search and I get the following screen.




I see that 15,114 blogs/blog entries provide a link to the American Red Cross website.

I can then do the same as I mentioned above.




* Note: I used the American Red Cross as an example because of the recent disasters.

Social Networking and Nonprofits

I recently read a post about social networking and nonprofits on Betsy's Blog. I started thinking about how nonprofits can make use of social networking sites.

As a member of a bunch of social/business networking sites, I know nonprofits can make use of these sites.

Nonprofits can find future volunteers and employees by searching through profiles of members of these sites. Some of these sites allow you to create groups, many of them have a category for nonprofit groups. If a nonprofit creates a group, members can join these groups, and the nonprofit can see what members are interested.

I am interested in hearing about how nonprofits are using social networking sites.

World Usability Day

World Usability Day is tomorrow.

As some of you know, usability is a topic I am interested in, especially as it relates to nonprofits and education.

Here are some usability links:

http://www.useit.com/

http://www.usabilityviews.com/index.html

GuideStar - How Good Is Your Web Site? The Importance of User Feedback

GuideStar- Does Your Web Site Give People What They Want?

Jakob Nielsen: Web Site Usability and Accessibility for NPOs

Kids' Corner: Website Usability for Children

Usability of Websites for Teenagers