Social Bookmarking: Gaining Control by Letting Go

Introduction
In Library Journal , Melissa L. Rethlefsen discusses social bookmarking. She notes, "Traditional library web products, whether online public access catalogs, library databases, or even library web sites, have long been rigidly controlled and difficult to use."

The use of Delicious, a social bookmarking tool, to bookmark web pages is a huge leap away from the "rigid" systems traditionally used in libraries. Libraries such as Thunder Bay Public Library and Nashville Public Library both use social bookmarking on their web sites.
Social bookmarking allows libraries to quickly add resources to any given topic. As Andrew Darby (2009) states, "Social bookmarking services have become popular with libraries as a means of quickly assembling lists of resources. Since anything with a URL can become a bookmark, such lists can combine diverse resource types such as web pages, scholarly articles, and library catalog records."

Using social bookmarking tools to add to your library resources can help direct your patrons to excellent sites on the Internet simply by tagging the sites with what Kelli Staley calls "plain language". Though tagging, according to Rethlefsen, is often controversial among librarians due mainly to a lack of authority control, social bookmarking tools, like Delicious, are important tools in today's online world.

Reflections on the Process of Learning About Social Bookmarking
Up until three weeks ago I had never heard of Delicious or social bookmarking. There is so much good information and good websites on the Web it is difficult to keep track of them without a product like Delicious.

Previously, I was adding to my favourites on my toolbar, but each time I went to add a web site it wanted me to sign in. It seemed to be such a bother and so I would just cancel each time and not even save the site.

I also used Bookmarks on my iGoogle page, but somehow the blue star that represents bookmarked pages blended in with all the other little icons and didn't represent anything to me. And so I rarely used the Google Bookmarking. I have a total of 11 bookmarked pages on my Google Bookmark after having used Google homepage for the past two years. Having used Delicious for only three weeks I have 54 bookmarked sites.

Delicious is a social bookmarking tool and with it you can view other's web pages they have saved. Once you save a web site in Delicious it links you to other people who have also saved the same web site. Clicking on the Bookmarks tab at the top of your Delicious page will take you to all your saved web pages. If I look on the right side of the screen I can see I have bookmarked nine sites with the tag "video". However, when I look at a site from Scholastics.com called Booktalks and Video Booktalks I can see that 155 people have linked to this page also. Now if I look at what some of those 155 people have bookmarked on their Delicious bookmarks I now have contacts who are interested in a similar topic-booktalks.


Delicious can also link you to a particular person's or organization's bookmarks. For example, when I looked for videos and booktalks I came across a user who had the following tags: Reading2.0, AuthorsIllustrators and LMSFinds. I followed her user name, "cuppajava" and looked at the sites she had saved. Her list of sites looked like ones I could use in the library and in teaching. With a click of the button I was able to add her resources to my list of resources.

Adding her bookmarks to my network allowed me to have access to almost 2000 resources which are organized through her tags and Tag Bundles. Tags are descriptors or keywords you assign to a web site to help you organize and remember your bookmarks in Delicious. Tag Bundles are similar to folders on your computer. Tag Bundles allows you to organize a group of tags.
Delicious is an extremely useful tool and with the Delicious tag button right on the toolbar at the top of the page it is easy to hit the button to save a web site. Delicious sets everything up for you when you want to save a site, all you have to do is attach tags to the web site or select from the tags Delicious recommends.

With Delicious you only have to sign in once each time you log onto the Internet. Unlike traditional bookmarks, Delicious bookmarking allows you to take your bookmarks with you no matter which computer you use. Kate Stirk notes "...that for people like her, who use multiple computers and are on the road, del.icio.us offers persistent access to favorite sites."

I am beginning to wonder how I get along without this tool. Laura K. Brooks (2008) in her article, "Old School" Meet Library 2.0: Bump your media program into an innovative model for teaching and learning states, "Even the once onerous task of bookmarking Web sites has become enjoyable thanks to social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us and mag.nolia." I have to agree with her, it truly is an enjoyable tool to use.

My Personal Learning (Me as a learner, me as a parent, me as part of a social group)
As a learner I have discovered a tool that is practical, useful and fun. I can see myself using this tool to track and share resources for my coaching, gardening and antiquing. As a parent/family member I was not sure I could find an application for this tool. Since we don't have Internet access at home my family doesn't share many sites with each other. Upon reflection though, I thought may be I could find a way to apply this tool in my personal life. My husband enjoys auction sales and always looks at auction sale sites when he keeps my company at the library. I could save several of his sites on my Delicious or set up a Delicious account for him. My sister in law knits and sews, and her husband, my brother, is forever checking the hockey stats. I could bookmark sites for them or I could also show them how Delicious works.

As a learner of a social group I could apply the use of this tool to connect with others in the areas of my interest that I have such as gardening and coaching.
At this time I am finding it difficult to differentiate between my social life and my personal life. So much of it overlaps in a small community.

Teaching and Learning with Social Bookmarking (Me as a teacher, teacher-librarian, and as professional learning network.)

The web2tutorial wiki on social bookmarking provides excellent ideas on how social bookmarking could be used by teachers and teacher librarians in their academic duties but also how it could be used to develop their professional learning network. Social bookmarking could be used to:

• Network with other educators around the globe who share your interests.


• Create social bookmark accounts for your school's academic departments.


• Allow yourself and your students to share bookmarks on research topics.


• Subscribe to someone's bookmarks via RSS and receive updates whenever they add new websites.


• Collaborate on projects with other schools, sharing bookmarks between all participating communities.



• Web sites for the public could be bookmarked for display on the library website such as Thunder Bay Public Library has done. Or the bookmarked sites could be separated into age categories such as Nashville Public Library has done.

I have begun to use social bookmarking to save sites for use with the grade three social studies unit. The old rule of "When you don't need something, you will always find it. But when you want something, you can never find it!" rings especially true for web sites. Now with Delicious I can begin to save sites for different units of study and projects and have them available without having to search and search. Also, having a tag roll or tag cloud on various sites I use often, such as this blog, gives me access to resources I know I have looked at before. This is far more efficient than searching the Web over and over again and hoping I will find a site I could use.

Saving another educator to my Network will help me to connect with other Teacher-Librarians. This gives me a sense of security knowing that I am not alone and that there are others who understand the demands of working in a library. In the past I have found it difficult to find ways to connect with others in the role of teacher-librarianship. Band operated schools such as ours do not belong to divisions. Connections can be made with other First Nation schools in the province but not many of these schools, if any, have teacher-librarians. Overall, this tool, I will definitely make use of in my professional life.

Conclusion

Any tool that can help make sense of the Web is a tool that should be embraced by libraries and teachers. Like it or not the Web is a big part of our students and patrons' daily lives. To keep the "rigid" control traditionally used in libraries to classify and organize Web content would be unfair. We should by using social bookmarking as Rethlefsen suggests to bridge the gap between what the library has to offer and the knowledge of the web the patron brings.

References

Brooks, L.K. (2008). "Old school" meet school library 2.0: Bump your media program into an innovative model for teaching and learning. Library Media Connection. 14-16. Retrieved from ProQuest database.

Darby, A. & Gilmour, R. (2009). Adding delicious data to your library website. Information Technology and Libraries. 12, 100-104. Retrieved from ProQuest database.