A Little Help From Your Friends: An Overview of Shared and Social Bookmarking

Rachel Bridgewater, Washington State University Vancouver
Jane Scott, Mt. Hood Community College, Tigard Public Library

Online Northwest, February 10, 2006, Corvallis, Oregon

Whether "folksonomy" is Greek to you or you've been tagging your bookmarks in del.icio.us since back in the day, you probably haven't had time to keep up with the proliferation of social bookmarking services. Tools like del.icio.us, Spurl, CiteULike, Connotea, and Raw Sugar allow users to find and store information without the use of controlled vocabulary. What applications do these services have within the library? How do you decide which to use? How do they compare with traditionally organized shared bookmarks? This session will examine both the broad conceptual issues involved with social classification and nuts-and-bolts practical applications.

Presentation
Bibliography/Further Reading (pdf)
Annotated list of social bookmarking services