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Sharing Online Resources: Social Bookmarking
This session will provide an overview of social bookmarking and demonstrate the sharing of online resources within a community of learners using Diigo & delicious
Session resources
Session Recordings 27 Aug 2008
Session Recordings 4 march 2009
Session Recordings 9 March 2010 (delivered as part of the Hot Topic Conversations program)
myLearning Podcast
Social Bookmarking: From the personal to the social
In the past, the main method of storing web urls (bookmarks) was using the the web browser itself by selecting bookmark this page from the menu. This stored the web page title and url onto the local computer for future retrieval. These collections could be organised by folders and comprosed largely personal collections often spread across numerous computers.
Social bookmarking involves using a web based service to store, categorise and most importantly publicly share our bookmarks. Typically this involves subscribing to a web based service such as http://del.icio.us or http://www.diigo.com and installing a browser plugin (firefox) or an additional toolbar used to assist in storing and classifying (tagging) urls. The entry is stored remotely on the service database against your profile and being a web based service you can access your collection of bookmarks and save new ones. It also means you can share your collection with others by sending them the link to your profile page or using RSS.
With the advent of social software (web2.0) and social networking there has been a bottom up revolution happening on the internet in terms of how users within online communities store, categorise and share online resources. Today, users are using tags to categorise, organize and share websites (bookmarks) they find on the internet through the use of bottom-up classification systems.
In Summary social bookmarking comprises
- A means for storing, organising, searching and managing favourite sites on the web
- Organisation is based on ‘tags’ or key words (individual or group)
- Bookmarks are listed chronologically, by category or tags, or via a search engine.
- RSS enabled – subscribers can become aware of new bookmarks as they are saved, shared and tagged by other users.
- Newer tools have a range of other features such as ratings and comments on bookmarks, the ability to import and export bookmarks from browsers, emailing of bookmarks, web annotation, and groups or social networking features
Watch this video by CommonCraft on Social Bookmarking
by The Common Craft Show
Tagging in Social Networks: user-based tagging and folksonomies
What is Tagging?
Tagging is the primary method of categorisation used in social bookmarling whereby key words are assigned to web based resources by users. Each user "tags" the resources arbitrarily according to their own personal preferences. Items may have multiple tags which may or may not correspond to other users tags. Because users assign their own tags, which may not necessarily correspond to other users, the system is potentially ambiguous and anarchic. For example I may tag “apple” for a resources related to a brand of computer however another person may be assigning it to a type of fruit.
This practice of social groups collaboratively categorising resources is known as folksonomy and differs from the more formal model of a predefined hierarchal model of classification know as taxonomy such as the Dewy Decimal system used in library's.
Taxonomy - The science of classification (The experts do it)
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Image by OZinOH
- From the greek verb:
- Taxis = "to classify"
- Nomos = "law, science, economy"
- Taxis = "to classify"
- Hierarchical-enumerative top down tree like structure
- Hierarchies designed and maintained by experts
- Repositories cataloged by experts eg. libraries
- Structure imposed on the world of objects
- Centralised classification
Folksonomy - Social classification (The Folks do it)
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image by oceanflynn
- Folk + Taxonomy meaning that it emerges from the people
- Open democatic system
- Constantly evolving based on user interactions and consensus
- tags capture the social fabic at that moment in time
- Structure is an emergent property
- Well suited to rapidly changing heterogeneous information sources such as the internet and social networks
- Distributed classification
By agreeing upon a common set of tags social bookmarking provides an effective tool for online communities to pool and share their bookmarks. Social bookmarking tools will often reccomend tags based upon comminity usage so that you can more effectively share your resources.
RSS feeds for tags
Social bookmarking services which utilise tagging provide rss feeds for each tag thereby facilitating syndication and mashups. Using RSS (Real Simple Syndication) and an aggregator like google reader users can subscribe to a tag feed and be keep informed of updates dynamically as they occur.
For example if you know of someone with whom you share a research interest you can subscribe to their social bookmarking service rss feed or to an individual tag feed. Using this method you can access the resources of an entire social network (group feed) or alternatively to an individuals feed.
RSS feeds can also be used to embed content from networked sources such as tag feeds. For example it's common for people to add a tag feed to a blog column or wiki page to strenghthen and foster community bonds.
For example, the links below are fed onto the jokadia blog from their del.icio.us account so every time a new site is bookmarked it will appear on the blog.
We live in an information saturated world where a google search returns potentially millions of results. Social Bookmarking allows you to filter and manage content to the sources you trust and value. Unlike search engines which rely on indexes built from crawling the web social bookmarks represent web resources humans value and have saved for thier own reference and thier networks and hence consided worthy of sharing. Most Social bookmarking sites allow searching the public resources and provide a rich souce of content for research and learning. This is forming part of what is coming to ne know as social search.
Del.icio.us
From there, it was but a small step to hosting others' lists, and so the social bookmarking tool del.icio.us was born. Now owned by Yahoo it probably the most well know and utilised social bookmarking tool.
Creating an acount
del.icio.us is a free web based service, simply create an account with a username, email and password.
Tagging your first site
Once your logged into your account click the Save a new bookmark link, this will promt you to enter the url of the site to be bookmarked.
If the site is a valid url you will be promted with the following fields to populate. The URL and Title will have been populated from the site but you can modify if neccesary. Notes is optional however useful if you would like to add some additional information.
Tags is where you enter your keywords to categorise and share your resource.
see the excellent help information on the del.icio.us getting started section
Tools to make the job easier
Bookmarklets (Buttons) are links you add to your browser's Bookmarks Toolbar. They are an easy way to post and view your bookmarks on the Delicious. Only Firefox, Safari, and Internet Explorer 6 and 7 are supported in the Delicious. more info
If you are using Firefox there is also a great add-on which adds del.icio.us functionality to the browser. more info
Diigo
Like del.icio.us Diigo is a free social bookmarking service. Pronounced as Dee'go the name "Diigo" is an abbreviation for "Digest of Internet Information, Groups and Other stuff." Diigo combines social bookmarking and social networking to form what they refer to as a Social Information Network (SIN) where information consumption, research, and sharing is central, and where the connection between people and people, between people and information, and between information and information, are exploited and harnessed to improve knowledge sharing and content discovery, and to enable more meaningful social connections and intellectual exchanges. (from Diigo site)
Diigo emphasis the social component of bookmarking by providing a wide array of tools and functions to form Knowledge-Sharing Communities. These include
Research: Annotate, Archive, Organize
- Store, tag, annotate and share bookmarks
- Create open lists of tagged resources
- Strore content from webpages into a searchable archive
- Highlight and add sticky notes to web pages, visible to other diigo uses
- Powerful search features
Share: Build Personal Learning Network
- Profile and friending features
- Messaging facilities between registered users
- Tools to cross post to other web 2.0 communities ie. twitter, facebook, buzz
Collaborate: Create a Group Knowledge Repository
- Create groups to share and manage collections. These include facilities for individual resource comments and group based threaded discussion forums.
- widgets for embedding in external services
Social Bookmarking in Education
- Create social bookmark repositories on relevant areas so you, your colleagues and students can contribute to a growing database of web resources.
- Network with other educators globally who share your interests
- Contact other people for professional networking, based on their social bookmarks
- Subscribe to someone's bookmarks via RSS and receive updates whenever they add new websites
- Collaborate on projects with other teaching sections, industry partners, libraries by sharing bookmarks between all participating communities
- Social bookmarking can be used as a very effective research tool
- Sharing online resources with other networked communities ie twitter, facebook
- If you want a social bookmarking services only visible within the DET firewall then CURLS is for you !!
Activities
- navigate to http://del.icio.us/ and set up an account.
- navigate to or or http://www.diigo.com and set up an account
- Set the post to del.icio.us option in the Diigo tools section
- install the diigo toolbar
- import your browser bookmarks into diigo if you have any
- find a new website and tag using the toolbar
Resources
Wikipedia entry on Social Bookmarking
Social Bookmarking - Short Version by Common Craft
7 Things you should know about social bookmarking - EDUCAUSE
CURLS - DET Social bookmarking sercice created by CLI (note: only accessible via the DET NSW Portal)
Getting Started in Diigo - by Robyn Jay
Tagging in Social Networks - sridgway
A social analysis of tagging (or how tagging transforms the solitary browsing experience into a social one) - An informative essay by Rashmi Sinha January 18, 2006
sridgway's resources tagged with socialbookmarking
Other resources
Click here to check TAFE NSW catalogue for resources on Social Networking. If a book that you would like to borrow is not at your local college, ask library staff to do an interlibrary loan for you.
TAFENSW libraries subscribe to a number of periodical databases which provide you with full text articles available to you online. One example is the suite of EBSCOhost databases. Click here to link to articles from EBSCOhost databases on wikis. If you wish to find out more about how to set up a RSS feed for a topic of your choice from one of the available databases please contact library staff at your college library.
