Matthew Ingram has a good, thought-provoking post on the relevance of social bookmarking. Because these tools make bookmarking so easy, it’s equally easy to accumulate a pile of urls that make it difficult to locate that site you’re looking for when you’re scrambling to meet a deadline. Yet, as an academic, I still find social bookmarking tools pretty useful. I like being able to locate a resource that I’ve bookmarked regardless of where I’m at or which computer I’m on.
Although, I think technically speaking it’s not a social bookmarking tool, Zotero, seems to be moving in that kind of direction with its upcoming sync tool.
I also like the potential for social bookmarking tools as a teaching tool; especially when I teach in online environments, the option of creating resource-sharing networks or groups can help build community. One relatively new player in the social bookmarking scene, at least to me, is Diigo. Among many of the standard features, it allows you to create private groups, which some faculty and/or students prefer when it comes to resource-sharing.
