Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking applications enable people to save or "bookmark" their favorite Web sites, blog posts, images, articles, or podcasts in an online space. By storing bookmarks within these online communites, rather than on the desktop, they can be accessed in the future from any Web-enabled computer. These websites are discovery systems in which everyone's favorites are open to public perusal.

• Portable
• Searchable
• Discovery systems
• Organize-able by tags

del.icio.us

• Recently acquired by Yahoo!**
• Over 1.5 million users

Features

• Bookmarklets
• Bookmarks
• Tags - descriptive keywords
• Saved by other users
• Search
• Subscriptions
• Network
• Tagging for:others
• Public or Private bookmarks
• Most Popular/Recent
• Exploration by user or tag
• Tag Bundles
• RSS Feeds

Great Tools for:

• Resource collections
• Subject guides
• Reading lists

How Are Libraries Using Them?

• To offer tag clouds on their websites

• To store their reader's advisory resources
• To collect federal and state government resources
• To display their library recommended sites lists
• To create dynamic library subject guides, (corresponding del.icio.us account) 
• To create class reading lists
• To create a social bookmarking community for their patrons:
  • Penn Tags

How Are Librarians Using Them?

• To track conference happenings
• To keep up with the latest developments in the field

Other social bookmarking applications

• StumbleUpon
• Furl
• CiteULike
• Blinklist

Hands-on

Exercise:

• Go to Delicious.com
• Create an Account
• Install Bookmarklets
• Bookmark a Website