Week 2: Free Your Bookmarks with Social Bookmarking

Perhaps the simplest way to start sharing organisational knowledge is with social bookmarks. Many people still have their list of Bookmarks/Favourites in their web browser, but when they’re not at their computer these links aren’t accessible. Enter the social bookmark.

Social bookmarks are web sites that let you create an account in order to save web pages. They differ from those on your browser in that 1) they’re accessible from anywhere; 2) you can clip a piece of the page for reference; 3) you can add categories (a.k.a. tags); 4) you can search your bookmarks; and 5) you can share your bookmarks with others.

The most widely used social bookmarking service is Delicious, which we will focus on this week.

One advantage of social bookmarks is that they don’t require the IT department’s permission to use. You can start sharing what you find interesting/important with your team or section without any new technology other than a web browser and access to the Internet. You’ll also find that you will be sending a lot fewer e-mails saying, “hey, check this out”. By creating your own “tag” you can have everyone finding information about competitors or new trends. A tag such as “ABC123″ can be used by everyone to identify something for a specific project, and then you can search for that tag and the system will show you what everyone has found.

As you continue to use social bookmarks you will also see others who have bookmarked similar items and then follow their links to show even more interesting stuff in your field of interest. The more you share, the more you learn.

Harold uses social bookmarks for everything except some password-protected sites, like his bank. He also will set up a new category for a client if it can help communicate better.

The tag for this course is -  wlning - short for Work Literacy Ning.

If you want to keep your bookmarks away from prying eyes, you’ll have to mark all your posts as private. Another option, if you want to share within your organisation, would be to use an open source social bookmarking system and bring it inside your company’s firewall, but that would take some cooperation from the IT department. An example of an OS social bookmarking application is Ma.gnolia.

Tags, Tagging and Folksonomies

Dave Weinberger says that in a digital world, "everything is miscellaneous" in the book of the same name . A key difference between physical and digital objects is that digital objects can be in more than one place. For example, in a digital catalogue, you can find a sink in the hardware section or the kitchen section. The real object can only be in one location but the digital object can be linked in many areas at once.

Many computers still use file folders for classifying and storing digital files. The object can only be in one folder, and probably not the one you think it is in. However, that isn't really necessary, and anyone who uses GMail knows that you can add as many tags as you want to an e-mail. All you e-mail are stored in one big "miscellaneous" bin, but you sort your correspondence by adding descriptive tags like - work, client A, jan08 or whatever you want.

Tags are labels that are used to describe things. Sometimes we use tags that are controlled by someone else, like the "wlning" tag that we've decided to use here. If all tags are controlled then we're probably using a taxonomy. If each person uses their own self-defined tag, then the aggregated results that emerge are called folksonomies. Delicious is one big folksonomy. There's more information about taxonomies, ontologies, folksonomies and thesauri at SmartLogic. Incidentally, Harold found this page in August and had bookmarked it on Delicious. To find it again, he just searched for the word "taxonomy" in his bookmarks and found this page, which was tagged - Library2.0; Learning; and student_resources. You may also want to check out this article, Tags and Folksonomies, Why Should You Care?.  An excellent screencast to watch on this topic is Knowledge Sharing with Tags, which describes some of the benefits of social bookmarking and tagging.

Introduction to the Assignment:

Forums for this week:

Social Bookingmarking Tools

Collaboration with Social Bookmarks

Diigo in Education (Added by Melanie Jennings to explore using an alternative social bookmarking tool, Diigo)

ACTIVITIES

Spectator

Watch the Commoncraft Video on social bookmarks with Delicious. This is aimed at teachers, but is a good introduction to social bookmarks.

Take at look at someone's existing bookmarks. Here are links to Tony, Michele and Harold on Delicious. Can you see any commonalities? How does each person use tags? Search each person's tags to find something of interest (suggestions: social networks; new web tools; learning thories; etc). Later in the week, search Delicious for the "wlning" tag or just click on this LINK

Joiner

• Social Networks

• Social Bookmarking

• Blogs

• Aggregators and RSS

• Wikis

• wlning

• socialnetworks

• learning

• personal

• formal

Creator

Participate in the Joiner activities as you are so inclined.

If you already use Delicious then take a look at Diigo, Furl or Ma.gnolia or one of the 49 services mentioned on SocialMarker.

Sign up for an account and see how these services differ from Delicious. Post your impressions on the Social Bookmarking Tools forum.

You may also want to try out one or more of the activities from this list of Nine Notable Uses for Social Bookmarking. Michele, for example, has been using social bookmarks to create an online portfolio (instructions here).

In the forum, answer questions from other members, such as those mentioned or any that crop up during the week.