Social Bookmarking and tagging

Del.icio.us allows social bookmarking or informal tagging of bookmarks.  This site is useful in that it allows you to access your bookmarks from other computers.  It is also handy in seeing what other people are tagging the site to gauge its popularity.  For instance, if you want to find a site on audio books, by finding a site which is popular, you could make the assumption that the site is useful.  It still lacks the authority control but savvy researchers will know that. 

Library Thing does much the same thing for books that del.icio.us does for bookmarks.  What I found very interesting about this site was that books can be entered with a scanner which is available on the site for low cost.  It also provides Library of Congress information as well as descriptions from popular sites such as Amazon.  You can choose to share your collections or keep them private.  I wish Librarything would allow the input of other formats such as DVDs and cds.  I presently use Amazon’s social bookmarking service as it allows different formats.  If Librarything were to accept different formats, I see I could upload my holding in Amazon to Librarything.  I would do so since I like the functionality of Librarything.

Flickr – This service allows one to store and publish their photos on the web.  This seems perfect for sharing photos with friends and family as well as the public at large.  It also allows images to be accessed from different computers and is useful in linking to other web applications such as Facebook and Youtube in order to add graphics.  Being able to create your own tags is useful and also provides insight about others perceptions.  This is evidenced by the collaboration of Flickr and the Library of Congress in their pilot project called the Commons.  Users are asked to provide tags to images from the Library of Congress to expand description of the images and promote the collection.

 

All three sites allow discovery through terms that may not have traditionally used to describe them.  If you are searching for a friend’s bookmarks, photos or books, if they used their name as tag you would find their materials easily.  These tags would also lead you to other tags that may be relevant but not apparent to you at first.

 

I love the organization aspects of the three products.  There are so many pieces of information and resources now; it is easy to forget what you already possess.  In fact del.icio.us can even check for duplicate sites before you add the bookmark.  Being able to build on my previous research and information gathering is a real time saver.  This is also true in the workplace with the added benefit of enabling promotion of resources and discussion of ideas.  Libraries can use these technologies to encourage their role as a social hub.  That  is what social bookmarking strives to do, share information and promote interaction among people.