Social Bookmarking in Libraries

At first I couldn’t really think of any uses for social bookmarking in libraries. However, this week’s presentation on social bookmarking got my creative juices flowing:

I can see the following uses for social bookmarking in libraries:

1. Subject Guides of Web Content
2. Key Resources for particular library departments (i.e. reference, information literacy etc)
3. Tagging of journal articles to which the library has electronic access.
4. Collaboration (sharing of useful electronic information) across various libraries of the same field of librarianship (i.e. academic libraries, health libraries, public libraries etc)
5. Sharing of useful electronic information within an organization. Of course it’s only useful if everyone uses and adds to it.
6. I really like what LibraryThing is doing with tags. It would be great to tag books for many reasons:

a. To keep a list of what you’ve read
b. To find other users with similar reading interests and see what they’re reading
c. To remember books you want to read, but don’t have the time to read at the present (like if you’re in library school)
d. For attaching tags to Fiction books that don’t normally get subjected (pardon the pun) to subject analysis (which I have always thought is a shame)
e. By paying attention to popular book tags, users might be able to get a more realistic view of which books are “good” than is presently provided through bestseller lists and other such (sometimes misguiding) tools for finding one’s next “read.”

Finally, if libraries did something like we’re doing in this course with a library tag (like our 757 tag), and encouraged patrons to use the tag, the library could get a good idea of what the interests of its users are and plan programs/services/collections to reflect those needs. It would be another means of doing informal user needs assessment.

Actually, thinking of the possibilities of social bookmarking within the library context is quite exciting!