Social Book Marking
Compiled by Tracy Kent, Computer Science Librarian and Reference
Software Training Consultant, T.k.kent@bham.ac.uk
What is Social Book Marking?
Social Book Marking is the art of assigning keywords (called tag
clouds) to organise your collection of web based bookmarks, categorising
your content and effectively building your own classification system.
Unlike regular cataloguing or metadata systems tag clouds can change
as the content changes as there is no authoritative control over
the data. To create a collection of social bookmarks, you register
with a social book marking site, which lets you store bookmarks,
add tags of your choice, and designate individual bookmarks as public
or private. Some sites periodically verify that bookmarks still
work, notifying users when a URL no longer functions.
Fact 1 Bookmarking on the web
Social Book Marking is about saving the location of something
– usually a bookmark but can be a reference from an online
source or a picture or a list of personal goals, etc – into
a space which is publicly viewable within a database. The usernames
are public (although not always meaningful) so that everyone knows
who listed a particular item. Bookmarking, on the other hand, is
the practice of saving the address of a Web site you wish to visit
in the future on your computer.
Fact 2 Flat, multiple term tagging
For every item loaded a number of tags or keywords are assigned
to aid retrieval and discovery. Some of these are suggested by the
various systems and others are at the discretion of the registered
user. The terms that you use to tag are more about remembering what
you categorised as something rather than any authority or accuracy.
On the one hand this ensures that all languages are included reflecting
social, cultural and political needs because it is based on what
the community sees as relevant key terms. However, others see that
this lack of control over the data results in lack of recall as
it will not bring everything of interest or control over broader,
narrower and related terms.
Fact 3 Everything is linkable in Social Book Marking
When users add tags (ie keywords) additional information is also
recorded. This includes source, author and date. It is this automatic
data collection that takes social book marking beyond being just
a bookmark tool. There are often (dependant on the service) extra
linking options to be able to link to openurls or DOIs (digital
object identifiers) to help aid resource discovery. You can also
use Social Book Marking tools to create RSS feeds for selected resources
added to these social book marking tools so that your users discover
resources from their own library resources but within their own
space.
Fact 3 Social Book Marking aids Resource Discovery
When you search a social book marking site you can see how many
others have used a tag and search for all resources that have been
assigned that tag. The tags
help to improve search
engines' effectiveness because content is categorised using
a familiar, accessible, and shared vocabulary. In this way, the
community of users over time will develop a unique structure of
keywords to define resources—something that has come to be
known as a “folksonomy.”
The tags can be used in reverse for resource discovery as well.
Rather than matching keywords you choose in advance you can let
them lead you towards what seems popular.
You don’t have to be registered to retrieve information.
As a Visitor to social book marking sites you can search for resources
by keyword, person, or popularity and see the public bookmarks,
tags, and classification schemes that registered users have created
and saved.
Fact 4 Social Book Marking aids social connecting
Social book marking services indicate who created each bookmark
and provide access to that person’s other bookmarked resources,
you can easily make social connections with others interested in
just about any topic. Using this type of tool for research lets
you take advantage of the insights of others to find information
related to the topic you are researching, even in areas that aren’t
obviously connected to the primary topic. If you are looking for
information about binge drinking, for example, you might find that
other users saw a connection between binge drinking and house prices,
taking you in new, potentially valuable directions. These kinds
of tools also encourage users to keep coming back because the folksonomy
and the collections of resources are constantly changing.
Fact 5 There are several Social Book Marking Managers
There are several organisations which provide software for this
activity. For some, though, the downside of the software is that
it is yet another location which has to be maintained and updated!
Activities range from news to photo sharing to events, personal
goals and academic works.
Such services include but are not restricted to :
• http://del.icio.us/
• http://www.shadows.com/
• http://www.clipmarks.com/
• http://www.connotea.org/
• http://www.citeulike.org/
• http://www.furl.net
• http://www.listible.com/list/social-bookmarking-sites
• http://www.flickr.com/
• http://lights.com/pickalink/bookmarks
• http://www.corante.com/many
• http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com
• http://philb.com/iwantto/share.htm
The technology behind social book marking is not complex, which
means the threshold to participate is low, both for Web sites offering
such services and for you the user.
Fact 6 : Search engines locate social bookmarks and social networking
weblogs
There are several search engines who are moving into the social
book marking arena. Technorati tracks materials from flickr, del.icio.us
and furl. Yahoo has sharemyweb which enables you to search results
with others. Pages are similar to normal Yahoo but with an extra
option for saving links which can be shared in the “community”.
You can also amend, add notes, tag, share and archive. There are
also several blog services dedicated to social networking and social
software including http://www.socialnetworking-weblog.com
and http://socialsoftware.webloginc.com
Fact 7 : Social Book Marking still means evaluate, evaluate evaluate
The key fact is that social book marking is done by amateurs.
There is no authority control as to how resources are organised
and tagged. This can lead to inconsistent or otherwise poor use
of tags. For example, if a user saves a bookmark for a site with
information about binge drinking but only tags the site with the
term “binge drinking” and not also with “alcohol”
or perhaps “mental health problems” that resource might
never be found by someone looking for information about the effect
of increased alcohol consumption on health. Because social book
marking reflects the values of the community of users, there is
a risk of presenting a skewed view of the value of any particular
topic. For example, users might assign pejorative tags to certain
resources.
PDF of Social Book
Marking Factsheet (40 KB)
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