Social + Bookmarking Combining Tools and People to Create New Services

Darlene FichterUniversity of Saskatchewandarlene.fichter@usask.ca

OLA Super ConferenceFebruary 3, 2006

Overview

What are social bookmarking tools?Why use one?How do they work?Library applications

What is a “social” bookmarking tool?

A social bookmarking site allows users to share their personal bookmark of favorite web sites and articles with others.

Anyone can search and view any bookmarks you designate as “public” .

Why use social bookmarking tool?

“Social” bookmarking sites:– Help people find like minds– Discover new resources– Point web visitors to your

favourite sites– Republish fav links to blog,

website, forum

Your Network

Why use social bookmarking tool?

Social “bookmarking”– Track all the interesting

sites you find– Organize web references

for research

How do they work?

1. Create an account2. Install toolbar or bookmarklet3. Add a site4. Search or browse your bookmarks

http://www.furl.net

Bookmarklet

Pop up window

Pick a topic or type in a new one:

Categories youhave added already

Save or save & email

Saved bookmark

Search

Local cache

Related sites

498 members also furled this, view comments

Browser bookmark tools: disadvantagesBrowser bookmarks were not used to find things again*Browser drawbacks

– Hard to manage– One computer– Limited search/browse– Many duplicates/dead links

*“Keeping Found Things Found™”http://kftf.ischool.washington.edu/projKFTF.asp

Social bookmark tools: advantages #1

Many helpful features not found in your browser bookmark application– Available anytime from any online computer

Ref desk, office, home, laptop– Very quick to assign multiple categories

Contrast “manage your bookmark” browser tools

Social bookmark tools: advantages #2

Features– One click to add & write a short annotation – One click to clip part of the site (simply highlight a

sentence or paragraph) before you click “Save bookmark”

– Rate sites on a scale from 1-5– Designate a bookmark or folder public or private

Social bookmark tools: advantages #3

Create a local cache of the page or article aka Google’s cached version

Prevents loss of information due to link rotNB for writers and researchers

Full text searchLinks, categories, tags, annotations and cache

Social bookmarking tools: disadvantagesSecurity

– how private are your private bookmarks?Privacy

– What personal information do you have to provide– Many schools do NOT or CANNOT have students sign

up for external servicesReliability

– Will the service be up?– Will they shut down and you’ll lose all your links?

Many social bookmarking tools

Web sites– del.icio.us, furl, RawSugar, Spurl, Netvouz,

BlinkList, Connectedy Web sites - scholarly citation style

– Connotea, CiteULike Install Locally

– Connotea, Scuttle, Unalog

Social bookmark tools & tagging

Social bookmark tools & tagging

Tags are descriptors or keywords individuals assign to objects (photos, articles, sites …)

The practice of collaborative tagging or categorization is known as a folksonomy

del.icio.us tag cloud

http://del.icio.us

Adding a link to del.icio.us

My Tags- alphabetical

My Tags –tag cloud

Tapping into the wisdom of crowdsRecent postsPopularRecommender systemsSearch the collective

bookmarksWatch lists

Photo: PartsnPieces

Some rights reserved

Where can they be used by libraries?

Libraries can tap into the movement of informal offline networks of information sharing by:– Leadership – install and promote the software– Make sure our electronic resource management systems

are “tag-friendly” Librarians can use them to build networks, share

resources, and discover new resources.

Scholarly networks move online

http://www.citeulike.org/

Strengthen library communitiesInformationRetrieval (8)

– A group to which it is possible to post IR related papers.Info_Lit_McGill (2)

– McGill University Library committee on Information Literacy

Librarians (6)– A group for academic/university/college librarians

librarians_german (3)– Group for German librarians

RSS feeds and bookmark services

Already mentioned del.icio.us and furlPublish your links to web site or blog

Furl can keep resource pages up-to-date

FURL links

http://library.usask.ca/~fichter/weblog/library_weblogs.html

Del.icio.us links republished on weblog

http://blogdriverswaltz.com/?p=693

Unalog.com – library community

Primarily used by hacker/librarians who tend to hang out on #code4lib

Open to anyone

http://unalog.com/

Library users

How are they/might they use social bookmark tools?

Penn State

http://tags.library.upenn.edu/

Penn State Library

Created toolbars and bookmarklet Adding links restricted to Penn StateWorld readableTag items in OPAC and video cataloguePlan to expand to e-resources

Discovery outside the catalogue

Links to the catalogue

H20 Playlists - Harvard Law School

http://h2obeta.law.harvard.edu/home.do

H2O Playlists make it easy to:“transform traditional syllabi into interactive, global

learning tools share the reading lists of world-renowned scholars,

organizations, and cultural leaders let interested people subscribe to playlist updates

and stay current on their fields promote an exchange of ideas and expertise among

professors, students, and researchers communicate and aggregate knowledge -- online

and offline.”http://h2obeta.law.harvard.edu/about.do

School libraries

Lewis Elementary SchoolInstalled Scuttle for teachers & students

http://tim.lauer.name/archives/004030.html

Tag – the library is it!

What if our users could tag everything – Every library page– OPAC search results– Electronic resources

Not the BBC

BBC social tagging prototype

http://www.headshift.com/archives/002498.cfm

Conclusion

Lots of social bookmark toolsLots of opportunity for libraries and librarians

to make use ofStart to think in Technicolor

– What if ?

Questions

darlene.fichter@usask.ca