Do You Use Tagging Services for Research?

December 25th, 2005

Tagging sites like del.icio.us, I think, are underestimated in terms of on-going research. I am in the process of an investigation into the concept of building communities and social capital. Thus, I have set up news searches (free and fee), blog searches (the usual suspects) and grabbed a few RSS tags from del.icio.us and Furl and placed them in my aggregator. Over the past few weeks, some of the best (read: most useful) resources and articles for further investigation have come from the tagging services. For example, today I was sent over a link to On the Commons. From the site:

“The purpose of this site is to explore the value of diverse commons, probe their distinctive dynamics and re-invent mechanisms for strengthening them. The commons provides a powerful critique of markets, property and neoclassical economics. But equally important, it is a force for innovation in social governance, political action, public policy and cultural change.”

They have three feeds available, which I immediately subscribed to:

+ Blog
+ Essays
+ Book Reviews

Communities (del.icio.us, et al) helping researchers understand communities. Lovely.

Comments are closed.