Social bookmarking
On: August 21, 2007At: 11:08 am

I joined del.icio.us a few weeks ago after having read the chapter in How to Use Web 2.0 in your Library on social bookmarking. I had been meaning to join for a while and finally took the plunge. I’ve been gradually getting used to using it and am spending some time organising my bookmarks more clearly.

As a user of Firefox (and Portable Firefox at work), I have been using the Foxmarks extension for a while now and have found it invaluable. I use the internet in many different places on many different computers; the Foxmarks extension automatically synchronises all your bookmarks and stores a copy on their server in case you lose the ones on your browser. My bookmarks are fairly well organised, however things have got very confused recently, particularly with the huge number of useful Web 2.0 websites and blogs I’ve been bookmarking.

When I joined del.icio.us I had the option to import all my current bookmarks which I did, however I soon found that it had given tags I wouldn’t choose myself. I also don’t see the need to have all my bookmarks on del.icio.us, particularly those which easily fit into the categories I use in my bookmarks (e.g. my banking websites in a Banking folder of my Firefox bookmarks).

After having used del.icio.us for a while, I think it will be best used to keep track of useful links for work, study and the Web 2.0 resources (which seem to be growing in number exponentially recently!). I’m thinking of maybe using it to create feeds for useful links from library blogs (e.g. useful Science related resources for the Applied Sciences blog I will hopefully be creating soon).

I have also tried using Furl to store my bookmarks but I prefer the functionality of del.icio.us (Furl has too many different categories rather than just tagging which I find straight forward), and it also seems more popular so tools, widgets etc. seem to be easy to adapt for your own use.

For anyone who’s interested, here is a link to my del.icio.us bookmarks.

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  • http://mattwilcox.net Matt Wilcox

    I’ve never liked del.icio.us and I can’t figure out why, because it has all the features that I’d want in a bookmark utility. Same with http://ma.gnolia.com

    I did try Google’s bookmark syncing service (I can’t even remember what it’s called now), but I hit a bug with the beta and can’t use it anymore.

    Roll on Firefox 3 and it’s new bookmark system. *toddles off to look at your del.icio.us*

  • Jo Alcock

    I think they take a lot of getting used to Matt, I didn’t much like it to start with either, it’s a very different way of organising things.

    I do like the fact that I can share my bookmarks though (although I haven’t needed to as yet!) and also the ability to search other people’s bookmarks, I’ve found a lot of useful sites that way.

    I hadn’t realised Firefox 3 was incorporating a new bookmarking system, should be interesting to see what that involves but I imagine it will be geared up towards a single user rather than collaboration?

  • http://mattwilcox.net Matt Wilcox

    FF3′s bookmarking system was supposed to be in FF2, but got pushed back – it’s called ‘places’ because it’s rather expanded from the traditional bookmark system.

    It allows lots of things, including making notes about the URL, storing bookmarks remotely, searching through your bookmarks, an API (so it would be possible to make an extension using Places – allowing you to share, etc), and a bunch more stuff. Looks to be interesting.

    http://wiki.mozilla.org/Places
    http://wiki.mozilla.org/Places:History_Use_Cases

  • http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/kwiddows/ Katharine

    Hi Jo,
    I’ve recently started playing with del.icio.us, but I’m not sure how best to organise it. It’s too easy to forget what tag you used for what and end up with things that should be categorised together not being.
    Librarians should, in theory, be good at such organisation, but after using folders for so long, it’s taking me a while to get my head round tags.
    I’ll keep playing, but I wont be using it for anything important for the moment!
    Katharine

  • Jo Alcock

    Hi Katharine,

    It’s nice to know I’m not the only one finding it a lot harder than I thought I should!

    I’m exactly the same as you, my folders are always really organised and it’s such a different way of thinking – theoretically I know it makes a heck of a lot of sense, but it’s taking me a bit of getting used to.

    I had an interesting lecture at my study school the other day, it was about cataloguing and the lecturer was explaining about the old style card catalogues and how they had to be replicated so that you could have entries for different fields (e.g. one card with the Author’s surname as the identifier, one with the Title, and a fair few to cover subject terms too!). I’d never really thought about how you would have found books before the OPAC. It really makes you appreciate just how amazing revolutionaries such as hyperlinking and tagging have transformed things!