Week 7: Social Bookmarking -- So Beneficial!

Using social bookmarks is a win-win situation. What other technology allows people to be altruistic when they are doing something for themselves!

Del.icio.us works, as Joshua Porter points out, because “personal value precedes network value.” In fact the social value of tags “is only a happy side-effect.” Let’s consider the personal benefits first. Bookmarking is a way for people to personalize information. The bookmarking function in a browser is not nearly as useful as a tool such as del.iciou.us for two important reasons. In my browser, I have tried to organize the myriad of bookmarks into files but, as these multiply, I soon forget where I filed things. Each of my bookmarks has one home here. But in del.iciou.us, if I have assigned multiple tags to a bookmark, I can search for sites in a number of ways, increasing the likelihood of finding them. In an age of information overload, this is a huge benefit. Secondly I can add a brief annotation. Who has not had the experience of looking at a file name after a period of time and wondering what it is and why in the world they bookmarked it in the first place?

The social benefits are huge too. We can feel good about helping others by simply making these bookmarks public. I laughed when I read Chris’ comment that social bookmarking allows him to practice the spirit of librarianship even when asleep. Indeed, helping others doesn’t get any easier! The old saying “many hands make light work” sure applies here. Look at our class, for example. We all bookmark sites but then have access to the collected input of 20 people. There are so many potential applications for this service. Is there any profession that wouldn’t benefit from this?

The concept of tagging is catching on much quicker than I would have expected. In Tagging Lee Rainie claims that 28% of Americans have used the Internet to tag content. There is something intuitively better about “laying paths where people are walking instead of trying to lay out paths and assuming people will follow them,” as Andrea Mercado puts it in Tagging on Flickr & del.icio.us. The biggest advantage is the ability of to use labels that make personal sense rather than Dewey or LC sense. In Cornucopia of the Commons, John Udell reminds us that when we tag, we “we can better understand how new items relate to our collective works.” What I like about del.iciou.us is the fact that users can bundle tags into larger groups. I like the fact that I can group my tags for encyclopedias, biographical resources, and dictionaries under a broader label such as “reference works.” I also like the fact that I can use a Boolean operator and use a combination of tags to narrow down my search.

Tagging has its problems though. Do we search for something with the tag “blog,” “blogging,” “bloggers,” or “blogs?” We certainly won’t find everything we want in one place. I noticed though that del.iciou.us allows users to rename or delete our tags and it will automatically rename or delete all older tags with the same name. This certainly helps with maintaining some level of consistency. But what about synonyms? Ambiguous terms? Another problem I foresee is that having access to so many bookmarks can be overwhelming. I searched for “wikis” in del.iciou.us and came up with 35,113 hits!

Citeulike and Connotea are perfect for academics. How great to have those tiresome bibliographic citations added automatically! These bookmarking tools will only get better as they recognize more and more databases; they seem pretty science-oriented right now. Each field is searchable in Connotea. I like its ability to search bookmarks by tags, descriptive comments, author, or title. Library Thing is another useful wiki engine but its users can only bookmark 200 books; after that there is a fee.

 I preferred the library sites that organized their bookmarks under categories. The Buley and Chelmsford libraries were best at this. I found the usefulness of a long unorganized list in Luptin and Penn not nearly as helpful. Subject guides are certainly a fabulous application of social bookmarking. There are so many great sites in every field of knowledge; social bookmarking makes them easily accessible. The Penn library site starts with a cloud tag – an effective visual way of presenting popular tags. I think one of the best applications of social bookmarking is allowing users to tag books. The Seldovia Public Library invited readers to tag new library books. Users can search for material by subject headings, keywords, or tags. To be able to search by subject headings or tags seems to me to be the best of both worlds.