Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking is an easy way to manage your “favorites.” Instead of having your favorites only accessible on one computer, you can now access them anywhere, anytime with social bookmarking sites such as del.icio.us. Social bookmarking sites use “tagging” as opposed to folders for organizing your favorites. The true benefit though, is the ability to peer into other peoples favorites and see how others are organizing similar “favorites.” This social method of saving favorites is beneficial to the medical community. Users can quickly browse medical related websites by sorting through tags or grouped tags and easlily find clusters of relevant information. A librarian could put together a pathfinder or a bibliographic resource page together for their patrons on any particluar topic. The medical staff at a hospital could compile article references, web sites, and other resources in one area so that they will never forget where those resources are. They could refer back to their social bookmarking site to remember what sources they used to make clinical decisions or implement new processes. Connotea is a site specifically for clinicians, scientists, and researches that allows them to share and save scholarly references. Social bookmarking sites are becoming a tool and can prove quite useful in medical librarianship and the medical community.