Have you ever read an article or blog post that you really like and think you may want to access again for a sermon, article, or some other purpose? Of course you have. And how have you chosen to keep track of it?

Knowing that I could not trust my memory, I used to print them out and file them. Today my file cabinet is full of articles I never have looked at again. Why? Was it not good information? No, most of them have been quite good. I have not accessed them because they have been filed in a paper system that limits my ability to find them.

Suppose a pastor reads a great article on a web site about leadership but it also pertains to building teams. What file would one put it in? leadership or team building? (Plus it kind of speaks to a few ideas on life coaching, but that is not the point of the article.) Assuming they do not make two (or more) copies, most would guess which file they were more likely to look for it in and stick it in there.

I used to do that…but now I use del.icio.us to “bookmark” it. If you would like to do the same, here is what you need to do…

1. If you have not already, download firefox. Firefox has extensions available that make using del.icio.us much easier to do.

2. Set up a del.icio.us account. Simply go to the web page and register. Your bookmarks will be available to view/search at del.icio.us/YOURACCOUNTNAME. (To see what a page looks like, you can to to my page or you can go view all I have tagged with del.icio.us to see how it works for different tags.

3. Download the del.icio.us complete Firefox extension. Restart Firefox so your extension now is active.

4. Set up your extension. Just follow the directions…real easy.

5. Now take that article you like, push the new tag button that is on the top of your browser, and start “tagging” your article. If it was the leadership/team building/life coaching I hypothetically suggested, on the tag line that pops up simply type in “leadership team-building life-coaching.” Then, some day when you want to find that article again you simply go to you del.icio.us page, click on either of your three new tags (a. leadership, b. team-building, or c. life-coaching and a link to the article will show up.

6. You may also choose to add notes in the notes section of the pop-up window. These notes will be helpful as you collect hundreds of links and remember the content of the page as well as allowing for better searching of your book marks to find what you are looking for. Extra Credit…You can also, prior to pushing the tag button on your firefox browser, highlight a short section of the article and it will automatically be published in the notes section of the pop-up window.

The only thing I do not like about this system is that tags are limited to one word. So using my example above, if you wanted to have an article about team building you would need to save it as “team-building” or “teambuilding” because any time a space appears it makes a new tag. So in other words, typing in “team building” would make a tag “team” and a tag “building”. There are other systems for saving links online that do allow for more than one word tagging, but they are not as fast loading or as compatible with all sorts of other web applications.

Your bookmarked sites are also searchable on the web page or via the sidebar with the extension mentioned above. So between the notes and the tags, you can find your bookmarked page 9 times out of 10 in less than two seconds.

Another great feature is the ability to, via the web page, search other’s bookmarks. That way you can find what other people, not a computer generating results via an algorithm, have deemed valuable enough to save.

Happy tagging.

From around the web on del.icio.us, you should also see…

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