Now scrolling: The Gettysburg Address

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Sunday, July 8, 2007

Week 6, Thing #13: Playing tag with Del.icio.us

Del.icio.us is the greatest resource I've worked with yet. I set up an account with them and downloaded their button and tag to my Explorer toolbar. Then I searched Lincoln and started bookmarking some very fine websites from the Del.icio.us database. I stopped at 11, but intend to add more as soon as possible.

The great thing about Del.icio.us is that you connect with sites chosen by others who have the same interests as you. When you click on the "saved by 5 other people" tag (the number varies), you get the webnames of those people, and the lists of sites bookmarked by them. Hence the social aspect of this resource. You can copy URLs of special interest from their lists. You can narrow your search by selecting only the "history" tag on somebody's list and getting even more specific hits. It really is a wonderful way to expand your own research. It's as if somebody else has done a lot of the work for you before you even start doing your homework.

I liked these new Lincoln sites so much, I added them to my Rollyo list. Then I moved the Rollyo search box to the top of my page, just under Lincoln's picture, which one person thought looked like Leonard Nimoy.

I also added three or four of these websites as new links on my page. And I'm going back to Del.icio.us to get more. What a great idea to have a simple button available at the top of the Explorer page, rather than scrolling through a "favorites" list each time you want to find something.

I hope others will check into my list and share some of my bookmarked sites. I see this as a powerful research tool, because the information retrieved seems more specific in nature than the average internet search, and the choices increase when new members join.

1 comment:

librarian666 said...

Hot damn, this is awesome! Is it time to go from Freak to Scholar? ;)

And yes, that one pic does look a bit Spockish.