You might think that having a website is all about self-promotion, but the reason I got a website in the first place was to solve a particular problem: I wanted to access my favourites or ‘bookmarks’ from any computer, not just my personal one. I created a page of useful links related to my work (it’s still there, though it’s not as useful any more) so that wherever I was working, I’d just browse to that page on the web, and could feel instantly at home.
I don’t use it any more because Delicious does it much better. You create a free account, and then whenever you come across a page that you like, you store it in Delicious. You can tag the links in multiple links, search them, make notes on them, and share them, as well as seeing who else in the world has saved the same link. This is a great way to find out about more sites in your field of interest.
Delicious is just one of many ‘social bookmarking‘ sites, but I like it because it’s clean, useful, relatively free of advertising and geared towards people who take bookmarking and research seriously. One of the things it’s been most useful for is collecting up sites that offer free sheet music. If I didn’t occasionally return to Delicious to look at my own links, I’d forget about all the places I’ve found over the years.
