Whatisit.com defines social bookmarkingas "a user-defined taxonomy system for bookmarks. Such a taxonomy is sometimes called a folksonomy and the bookmarks are referred to as tags. Unlike storing bookmarks in a folder on your computer, tagged pages are stored on the Web and can be accessed from any computer...Web sites dedicated to social bookmarking, such as Flickr and del.icio.us, provide users with a place to store, categorize, annotate and share favorite Web pages and files."
So simply speaking, social bookmarking is the practice of saving bookmarks on a public website and adding keyword tags to them to aid in searching.
There are advantages and disadvantages to social bookmarking.
Advantages
Disadvantages
bookmarks are available from any Internet computer
no controlled vocabulary or subject headings
easy to see other's favorites
no standardized structure such as using singular or plural forms
can easily add multiple tags to bookmarks and search them
lack of tagging rules occasionally leads to unorthodox tagging schemes
can see how others have tagged the bookmark
no subheadings so difficult to indicate hierarchical relationships
Applications in Libraries
RSA uses LibraryThing to supply tags for its online catalog. This helps the catalog user find additional items with keywords that other users have identified and attached to the record. Here is a screenshot of a RSAcat record with tags included:
Social Bookmarking Sites
The only social bookmarking site I know still exists is Diigo (updated 9/23/24)
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