Overview Research Tools Turning Search into Research Darlene Fichter Data Library Services, U of S Library November 15, 2004

Social Bookmarking Tools  What are they?  What features do they offer?

Features  Offer more the standard bookmarking –Ability to bookmark any site with two clicks –Accessible from any computer  Accessible by anybody –By default, links are public unless marked private  Searchable personal archive  Local Cache –Furl will keep a cache of the pages/documents you keep. Spurl - 150Kb

Sharing/Learning with Others  What’s hot  Spurl, furl, del.icio.us, and feedmelinks create lists of active and popular resources

Tagging  Tools like de.licio.us and flickr, a social photography tool, make it easy to add keywords or tags  Other tools have more sophisticated schemes and support multi-word categories (furl) and hierarchical structures (Spurl)

Hierarchy

Recommendation Services  Built-in recommender systems –Item Level:  Who else has added this item and what comments did they make  Leads to discovery of people with like interests –Profile Level

Subscribing to Someone’s Bookmarks  View online when logged in  RSS feed –All bookmarks –At the topic level  By –Daily digest

Productivity Tools Thumbnail Tools: BugMeNot, TinyUrl Pre-populated Searches

Lazy Blogger / Webmaster  Post your links to your blog  Post bookmark folders on your web site for departmental news, etc.

Insert JavaScript to Display Bookmarks

More features …such as  Export:  Furl XML format  Zip archive of your saved documents  Internet Explorer favorites format  Mozilla/Netscape bookmarks format  MLA citation format  APA citation format  Chicago citation format  CBE citation format  BibTeX citation format

Risks - Hosted Applications  Stability  Longevity  Security Export your database

Are Social Bookmarks for You?  Definitely the right tool for some jobs  My case –3 workplaces, multiple computers, browsers –Travel –Write and need cached copies –Need to share – publish to web, by –Need to “Keep Found Things Found”™

Questions?  Find out more on social bookmarking tools?  Check my furl: – –Change drop down to Social Software – Bookmarks –Resource ListResource List  Article in Online September/October 2004 “ Tools for Finding Things Again” -