Activity Three

Activity Three

Set up an account a social bookmarking service such as Diigo -https://www.diigo.com/ - or Delicious - http://delicious.com/

Explore the functionality for storing, tagging and sharing your bookmarked resources.

Get started - go out and tag a few resources!

If you wish to use this task as one of your three OLJ tasks.  You could write a short evaluation (no more than 350 words) of your use of social bookmarking - include a critical evaluation of the effectiveness of different features and/or functions, as well as a brief statement on the different ways an information organisation may be able to utilise such a tool to support information services, learning and/or collaboration of users and/or employees.

I've found social bookmarking to be a very useful tool for me, especially as I'm not always on the same computer, and also to engage collaboratively with others online. I use two social bookmarking tools: Delicious and Pinterest. I was first shown Delicious in a web 2.0 training course '23 Things' which was adapted from the first 23 Things http://plcmcl2-about.blogspot.com.au/ by Helene Blowers. The course was designed to introduce library staff to new technologies that were useful to themselves as information professionals, as well as tools that could or were going to be used in the library. 

The best thing about Delicious nowadays is that it bookmarks all your Twitter links, so it's curating and collection all the links you post to Twitter without you having to worry about it. It's much easier to go back through Delicious to find links to articles you've posted that having to scroll through your Twitter feed without any search functionality. Also, the social aspects of Delicious are very useful. Not that many people I know have Delicious accounts, but I can still share any of my links with friends and colleagues through the ‘share’ tool to Twitter, Facebook, email or Instapaper. 

Pinterest has a much larger audience, so find this site to be far more interactive and social. I have an interest in art cinema, and I’ve created a large collection of film still with quotes by directors and actors. Pinterest, being a visual bookmarking tool, is more effective for bookmarking things that can be represented by a photograph. Like Delicious, I can access my bookmarks and share then from any computer or device connected to the internet. 

In the library setting, many libraries have a Pinterest account like Cockburn Library, and use this to showcase new library books, as well as their collections and articles of interest for mothers and young adults. They also have general links to recipes, art and literary quotes. The collaborative aspect to this that users can ‘re-pin’ the pins of Cockburn Library and comment on their links. Other  library accounts can also share links with each other. I think in an information professional context, Delicious is more useful for staff as a place where links about library topics can be curated in a shared location. Staff could visit the site and look at the links saved, and also save new links for everyone else to share. This encourages discussion and reflection about new library technologies and initiatives.