Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking allows individuals to share their bookmarks (including annotations) with one another and also allows the user to access resources from any connection to the web. The “social” element also allows users to make “those who bookmarked this site also bookmarked” connections.

• Common Bookmarking Features: browser bookmarklets and toolbars, tagging, annotating, import/export
• Common "Social" Features: visible with public vs. private options, network with "friends," subscriptions to follow specific tags, individually pushing and receiving links, and just the general "who bookmarked this also bookmarked" ability.

Tools:

• Del.icio.us—robust annotation options (annotation window), easy add without a bookmarklet, rss out output for both user and individual tags (see below), cross-tag organization, full toolbar and firefox add-on, widgets on LOTS of sites (Facebook, personal portals/homepages, etc.)
• Furl—robust annotation (annotation window), caches pages, no easy way to add pages without a bookmarklet, not as many built in social features.
  
• Diigo—caches pages, highlight and annotate on individual webpages, really robust annotation options, has groups (could make classes), lists can be made into web-videos (click on "Tools" above for an example), full toolbar, connect to blog, simultaneous bookmarking (plays well with others bookmarking services like delicious), output widget in javascript, slight learning curve in learning all the tools.
• Fleck—physically situates annotations on individual webpages, can share via email, connect to blog; very useful if you want to "lecture" from a webpage and set up notes in advance.
• ClipMarks—easily clips images, videos, and text; does not capture page title when clipping, it can email and blog clips, clipcasts (see above on the right), facebook friendly, ranks ("pops"), significant learning curve to work in the account, cranky browser tool that does not work well with other bookmarking browser tools.
  
• Stumble Upon—surfing tool, ranking tool, provides rss output
  
• Digg—ranking tool, difficult to input new bookmark, biased ranking based on the types of users; however, check "digg the candidates" as a cool use of the "socialness" of the tool.
  

Resources: Social Bookmarking in Plain English, YouTube: v=x66lV7GOcNU 7 things you should know about…Social Bookmarking Sites to See: Social Bookmarking Towards a Managed Social Bookmarking Environment in Higher Education Criteria for Evaluating Social Bookmarking Tools

How might you use Social Bookmarking in Scholarship?

• Track your own sources
• Follow bookmarking of other scholars in your field

How might you use Social Bookmarking in Teaching?

• Sharing resources with students (can output as an RSS feed)
• Tracking students’ research process through what they bookmark (and annotate)
• Sample Annotated List (could have students include as part of the annotation a draft of the full bibliographic citation)
  

How might your students use Social Bookmarking in their lives?

• Track their own resources
• See what others have collected on a certain topic/theme/issue (follow a chain of research)