Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Tagging and Social Bookmarking

Thing Thirteen



Del.icio.us and Furl are two social bookmarking sites that offer a way to organize, store, or discover web bookmarks from other users. Since they are sites that collectively organizes bookmarks through tagging, users can view bookmarks from other users with similar interests or read their comments on the article. Thus, making research possibly easier by searching other users' stored web pages and seeing how they also tagged the information.


One aspect of Furl that is beneficial is it "privately archives a complete copy of the html of each web page that a user bookmarks." This allows one access to the article researched even if it has been modified, removed from the web site, or if the web site is down. While researching, I can recall a couple of times that this archival feature would have been assisted me when an earlier article I wanted to use could not be accessed or located. Also, several times students have researched one day and returned the next day at a loss where to locate the previously used article. Since so many middle school students are poor note takers and fail to properly cite the source, Furl would be an advantage to libraries. Therefore, creating bookmarks and improving the accessibility of articles in personal or library research are advantages of social bookmarking. My problem is finding the time to do it.

1 comment:

mmw said...

This is something you have to make time to do. Bring it to the top of your to-do list and make it a priority. It will save you a lot of time once you start using it regularly. It is so easy to find that site that you bookmarked three months ago because you tagged it.