Sharing/Social Bookmarking

Social Bookmarking

	Many of our news stories include bookmarking icons like those shown above.

Social bookmarking, or "tagging," is an increasingly popular way for internet users to find and share information resources. A number of our news stories include a group of icons like those shown at the right, each of which links to a popular bookmarking website. This enables users of these sites to easily tag our stories to share with other users or for their own use.

It's important to note that most bookmarking sites require you to register as a user before you can submit a bookmark to their site. On the other hand, many sites will let you search their database of bookmarks without registering.

What is Social Bookmarking?

Rather than simply creating and organizing bookmarks or favorites on their desktops, social bookmarking websites like Digg, del.icio.us, and the hundreds of similar sites provide users with a fast and easy way to store, find, classify, review their bookmarks, as well as to share them with other users. Bookmarking sites aggregate user input to rank and classify sites. They also enable users to search across the site's collection of bookmarked sites using keywords or "tags" that have been assigned to them by the site's community of users.

The sharing/social bookmarking sites linked to from this site have been chosen because they have relatively active exchanges of scientific news and information. Please note that, like the internet as a whole, social bookmarking sites contain information and links to information on a wide range of topics—some authoritative and agreeable, some not. Be sure to browse carefully.

Where can I learn more?

Educause provides a good overview of what social bookmarking is, as well as some of its implications for research, information exchange and online culture in its 7 things you should know about Social Bookmarking. Wikipedia's Social Bookmarking entry provides a similar sort of overview, including a little historical background and related links and references.