Word of the Day

Folksonomy. You read right. You're new to the world of social bookmarking and perhaps the first word you stumble upon is folksonomy or in other words, the collaborative creation and management of tags in the pursuit of annotating and categorizing information. Simply put: bagging and tagging in a community sort of way.

Personal Exploration
So, before social bookmarking took hold, how did you save your favorite sites? I remember the good old days of copying and pasting links into Word document. Than someone introduced me to Yahoo!bookmark. Yes, it was a pleasant surprise and my days of copying/pasting to Word Document were over. I do admit I got a little carried away. I had four yahoo accounts and used every one of their bookmarks and molded and fashioned them after my likeness. The first account was a jambalaya of websites since this was my first voyage into the foray. The second account became a bookmarking area for all things pertaining to academics. The third account became the oasis for my webcomics and artsy-fartsy moments. Lastly, the fourth account was for all of my anime music, pictures and download information (yes, I was once an otaku).

What's Out There
There is a wealth of social bookmarking sites out there. Delicious and Diigo were recommended for exploration, but for a little variety I decided to explore Digg as well. I wanted to see where each site stood in ranking and typed "social bookmarking sites" in Google to get a bigger picture of these applications. From the website, ebiz, I was able to see continually updated statistics of each app. Diggs stood at the top whereas Delicious and Diigo followed shortly after. Ultimately, I wanted to see which app would give me a seamless ride on the social bookmarking express.

First Impressions
Diigo felt like a friend I could take from site to site with me. Although I could import my browser bookmarks into Diigo, the feature that was immediately introduced was Diigo's own bookmark below the browser bookmark. Delicious appears to be similar in nature although rather than a bar appearing right under the browser bookmark a separate window is opened to bookmark the chosen site. Digg, well, Digg seems to be another story all together. Once I got past registration, I became completely lost and couldn't make heads or tails of the website. The definitions Diigo and Delicious use to navigate their users throughout their apps were nowhere to be found on Digg. Anyone out there come to the same conclusion?

What's the point?
Social bookmarking seems to be the current web trend. For those beginning a serious surf of the Internet, bookmarking is a question of "why"? For those who are a regular or native on the Internet, it's a question of "why not"? Daniel Nations brief synopsis of social bookmarking, talks of the value of social bookmarking compared to the old trends of copy-and-paste-into-word-document-bookmarking and if one wanted to really think about it, a different way of searching. He also mentions the difference between social bookmarking and social news (apparently Digg falls under social news). For those of you who are new to the term as I am, will discover that this term within social bookmarking refers to bookmarking related to news with breaking headlines and blogs that discuss those topics.

Uses within the Library
So what's the verdict for social bookmarking in libraries? Yes, seems to be the unanimous vote. One could even say that its a librarian's paradise. The ability to find sites through tagging but to also involve library users in the process, would be in my mind, a stupendous matter! As Melissa L. Rethlefsen points out, bookmarking seems to be the comfortable go-between medium for users and librarians (Library Journal, 9/15/2007). Within library circles, Google has always been a debatable subject of practicality or an inept source of information. To use or not use Google has been a heated topic but with bookmarking, librarians can now point to the right road for the information journey. Social bookmarking for libraries is about providing reliable sources but allows flexibility and control both in the hands of the user and librarian.

This seems to be the case for public libraries but what about academic libraries? Steven B mentions that some university library's are taking advantage of what social bookmarking has to offer on their campuses. By creating their own social bookmarking program, they are giving power into the hands of the students to select sites that are relevant to their studies and to share that information to fellow classmates as well as other students. Steven mentions the next step to tagging would be tagging library content in the OPAC.

So what is the plus side of folksonomy within the library? Better location of sources. Ellyssa Kroski explains that "hierarchical taxonomies are designed for finding specific resources whereas folksonomies are predisposed to discovering unknown and unexpected resources" (Library 2.0 and Beyond 95). Unlike the Library of Congress classification scheme which takes years for information to be updated, folksonomy allows for constant update since users are involved with the process.

Uses within the School
So what's the news with schools? Are they tagging along? Have they adopted a social bookmarking buddy? Share More! Wiki is a great place to get stories of teachers venturing into the social bookmarking foray. Some teachers share success stories where they have created social bookmarking account and are actively using it, whereas other stories tell of contemplating using the app or just beginning the venture into the unknown.

The Bad and The Ugly
I found that Wikipedia gave a well-rounded view of the sunny and darker side of social bookmarking. One downside to social bookmarking is that there is no set standard. Capitalization, misspelling, slang or singular/plural is not defined. It's great, it's free, but watch out for spammers! Some people have started using social bookmarking as a means of better accessing their website in a Google search. Spammers have caught on to this and bookmarked web pages numerous times and/or use popular tagging for for higher hits thus creating problems for developers and forcing them to readjust their system.

A Return to the Self
I haven't fully delved into the bones of Delicious or Diigo yet, but I know I will be frequenting the site more often. Having been in MLIS program, I am always finding myself sharing links with fellow classmates. What better way to share than social bookmarking? If I'm going to share I mind as well save myself the energy of running to my personal computer and pulling up links from my web browser and instead turn to an app that frees up my memory. Have you gotten a social bookmarking buddy today?

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Sources: Courtney, Nancy. "Library 2.0 and Beyond." Wesport, Connecticut; Libraries Unlimited, 2007.