Well today we are looking at tag clouds. I think they are a great idea to make searching easier and more user friendly. They are not really very different to a list in a navigation panel on the side of a home page. Tag clouds are more visually eye catching and may make your home page appear more dynamic. However, it is important that it is not over done and kept simple. Some clouds I have seen are much too busy and this makes the items hard to find. Particularly if you are looking for one of the lesser, unemphasised tags. I find the tag cloud on the Kiama Library site, http://www.library.kiama.nsw.gov.au/ , a bit overwhelming and not easy to use. It moves as you move your mouse and scrolls the tags around so they may not be immediately visible at all. The only advantage that I can see is that it allows there to be more tags presented without an enormous clutter. In libraries, where keyword searching is a valuable tool, tag clouds could have enormous potenial in simplifying usage, especially in commonly used subject areas. The danger is to not over crowd or complicate the cloud.