Sites like del-icio.us, while pro­vid­ing an inter­est­ing (voyeuris­tic?) look into what sites oth­er peo­ple are find­ing inter­est­ing, are pri­mar­i­ly about col­lect­ing things for myself and mak­ing them refind­able.

How is refind­able dif­fer­ent from find­able? And fur­ther on how can look­ing at what cues peo­ple cre­ate for mak­ing things refind­able for them­selves inform what we do to make things find­able in the first place.

I’m not ready to accept the easy answer that the cues to refind­able are the best cues to find­able. Mean­ing that I do not think that tag clouds are suf­fi­cient find­ing aids. What val­ue do they bring to mak­ing things more find­able? And can we fig­ure out how to cre­ate that val­ue up front in our con­tent and organization?

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