“Social bookmarking is a way for Internet users to store, organize, share and search bookmarks of web pages. In a social bookmarking system, users save links to web pages that they want to remember and/or share. These bookmarks are usually public, but depending on the service's features, may be saved privately, shared only with specific people or groups, shared only inside certain networks, or another combination of public and private. The allowed people can usually view these bookmarks chronologically, by category or tags, via a search engine, or even randomly.” From Wikipedia

1. Explore social bookmarking sites

Take a look at a few social bookmarking sites (see below for some links) and their own descriptions of what they do and how they can be used. Each essentially work in the same way, but their focuses and aims vary. Some are geared more towards saving links, some are more community-orientated and some are more about harnessing the collective wisdom to find the best of the web.

• Del.icio.us: http://del.icio.us
  • About: http://del.icio.us/about/
  • About tags: http://del.icio.us/help/tags
• Simpy: http://www.simpy.com
  • About: http://www.simpy.com/about
• StumbleUpon: http://www.stumbleupon.com
• Digg: http://digg.com
  • About: http://digg.com/about
• Reddit: http://reddit.com
• Furl: http://www.furl.net
  • Features: http://www.furl.net/doc/features
  • How people use furl: http://www.furl.net/doc/uses
• Connotea: http://www.connotea.org
  • About: http://www.connotea.org/about

Think about how these might be useful in libraries, and which sites lend themselves most to library use. Post your thoughts to your blog.

2. Explore del.icio.us

We have chosen del.icio.us for this exercise, however if you prefer one of the other sites, please feel free to explore that in the same way instead!

Register

• Go to http://del.icio.us and click on ‘register’ in the top right-hand corner.
• Fill out the form and hit register. This will take you to a screen where you are encouraged to download and install the del.icio.us toolbar buttons. YOU DO NOT NEED TO DO THIS! If you choose to (and are able to) then you can download the buttons any time onto your own computer. For today, ignore this – you can save links manually quite easily!
• In order to start posting, you will need to verify your account. Del.icio.us will send you an email once you register so that you can do this. Check your email and click on the link to verify.

The bookmarking part

• Click on ‘post’ at the top of the screen. This will bring up a form where you can enter the URL of the page you want to save, as well as the title, some notes (optional) and tags.
• Enter the URL etc of your library website, or the Oxford wiki (http://socialouls.wetpaint.com) or your blog. Add a note (these will be visible by anyone) and a few tags. Tags can be anything you like, and you can use as many or as few as you want to. Just be aware that del.icio.us uses spaces to separate tags, so you can’t use spaces within tags (eg ‘socialbookmarking’, ‘SocialBookmarking’, ‘social_bookmarking’ are all OK, but ‘social bookmarking’ would be viewed as two separate tags).
• Save the link and add a few more!

A lot of websites allow you to post content directly from them to social bookmarking sites. As an example, go to the BBC news site (http://news.bbc.co.uk) and click on a story you find interesting. At the bottom of the story you should see a box with links to various social bookmarking sites.

To add this story to your del.icio.us page, simply click on the del.icio.us link in the box. This will bring up a posting box but with the URL and title already filled in (you may need to log in first). All you need to do is add your notes and tags and save the page. A lot of websites use a ‘share this’ button.

Your links will now be accessible at http://del.icio.us/[yourusername], or by clicking on ‘your favorites’ when you are logged in. They display in chronological order, most recent first.

The social part

• Take a look at the links you have saved (click on ‘your favorites’). Under each of them, between the tags and the date, it will tell you how many other people have saved the same link, if anyone else has. If no-one has saved any of your links, add the Oxford wiki and look at that.
• Click on the text where it says ‘saved by x people’. This will bring you to the page for that URL. On the left hand side it will display the latest notes, and on the right is a list of people who have saved the URL, along with the tags they allocated it.
• From here you can look at other people’s saved items by clicking on their username. Pick someone and have a look through their list. You may well find that people who have saved the same things as you have saved other things you are interested in. You can save any link from within del.icio.us to your own list just by clicking on the words ‘save this’ next to the link.
• If you find someone who has lots of interesting links, and whose favourites you want to be able to access quickly, you can add them to your network (using the link at the top of the screen). You can then see their favourites by clicking on ‘your network’ anytime. You become one of their fans, so they can see your favourites too. Once you have added people to your network, you are able to save links for them – a link will now show at the bottom of the posting form.
• You can also use del.icio.us to discover links by subscribing to tags – anything saved with that tag will then show up on your ‘subscriptions’ page. To do this, click on ‘subscriptions’ and then ‘edit’ underneath ‘your subs’ on the right hand side.

Sharing

Like all web 2.0 sites, del.icio.us offers various options for sharing your bookmarks outside the site.

• There are RSS feeds available from every page (including tag-specific ones, if you’re only interested in certain links within someone’s favourites) – the button is at the bottom of each page. If you have already experimented with RSS feeds, subscribe to one in your reader.
• You can share your latest bookmarks via a widget in your blog or on your Facebook page. To do this, click on ‘settings’ in the top right hand corner. This brings you to a page with a lot of account options.
  • To create a Facebook widget, click on ‘Facebook integration’ under ‘Bookmarks’. You will then be taken to Facebook to add the application to your profile. Unfortunately you can’t add the del.icio.us application to pages on Facebook yet, though apparently they’re working on this.
  • To create a blog widget, go to ‘link rolls’ under ‘Blogging’. This will give you the javascript you need to paste into your page element in Blogger (see advanced blogging exercise). You can tweak the widget using the options at the bottom of the screen, then just copy and paste the javascript into Blogger.