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Social + Bookmarking Combining Tools and People to Create New Services Darlene Fichter University of Saskatchewan [email protected] OLA Super Conference February 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. 2. 3. 4. Create an account Install toolbar or bookmarklet Add a site Search or browse your bookmarks http://www.furl.net Bookmarklet Pop up window Pick a topic or type in a new one: Categories you have added already Save or save & email Saved bookmark Search 498 members also furled this, view comments Browser bookmark tools: disadvantages Browser 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 rot NB for writers and researchers Full text search Links, categories, tags, annotations and cache Social bookmarking tools: disadvantages Security – 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 services Reliability – 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 crowds Recent posts Popular Recommender systems Search the collective bookmarks Watch 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 communities InformationRetrieval (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 furl Publish 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 State World readable Tag items in OPAC and video catalogue Plan 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 School Installed 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 tools Lots of opportunity for libraries and librarians to make use of Start to think in Technicolor – What if ? Questions [email protected]