Joy Pyles

September 19, 2007

7 Things You Should Know About Social Bookmarking. (2005.) EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative. Retrieved September 18, 2007 from www.educause.edu/eli/.

The topic of this article is social bookmarking and how it can help organize frequently visited websites. The author geared his writing towards any and all frequent internet users with the purpose of informing them on how to keep track of favorite web sites and use tags to connect them to other users and topics.

The author claims that social bookmarking is an application that can greatly improve one’s organization of both information and resources found on the internet. Because it’s accessible on the internet, anyone can view it and it’s easier for the user to get to, regardless of where they’re at. Not only does social bookmarking give the user an easier way to connect to information, it also connects them to other users and similar topics using tags. 

Social bookmarking requires setting up an account with a social bookmarking website. This site is then used to bookmark websites, organize the information, and tag whatever you want. This is accessible from anywhere on the web and is the avenue through which you are connected to other articles and users on similar topics.  When using social bookmarking, a user is able to see all other users that are linked to that particular website. Preferences can also be set to private, so that your name won’t be linked to a website you have bookmarked. Social bookmarking can keep everything on the web, organized in one place.

I’ve heard the term “social bookmarking” before, but it’s never been explained to me.  The author compared it to bookmarking, which is something I’m familiar with.  Bookmarking, or using “favorites” on Internet Explorer, is something I do all the time.  However, I have been in situations where I was using one computer and needing to access information that I had saved on another computer- a situation similar to one mentioned in this article.  I think social bookmarking would be a much more efficient application to use when going back and forth from work, campus and home.

This article discussed another application that can be useful in research, which adds to our list of wikis, search engines, RSS, and weblogs. The author also mentioned the sense of community that social bookmarking can create.  The word “folksonomy” was use to describe this community. Although I’ve never heard this term, the context allowed me to understand it to mean the sense of community and realm in which common interests are shared. “Community” and “connections” have been mentioned as an underlying theme to all the readings we’ve been assigned in this class.

I think that social bookmarking can have an impact on the clinical world by creating a resource for therapists to use regarding therapy and disorders.  Since a social bookmark connects users to people and not just information, it would allow the therapists to interact with a range of individuals, from professionals regarding disorders to parents of children receiving therapy. This application would also allow professionals to interact with each other, staying up to date on each other’s work and research. It would be beneficial for therapists, as well as any other person, to be able to access this information from home, office, or wherever they may be.