Social Bookmarking in Libraries

Google and other aggregators haven't stolen any value from the creators of the content they are aggregating -- they have done what intermediaries have always done, which is create new value based on doing for customers what those customers cannot or do not want to do themselves -- the service of sorting through all that content to find the thing that solves their problem.

Rather the PSL are needed for the distribution of the users' attention back to the works. From an ocean of possibilities the PSL find, nurture and refine the work of creators that they believe fans will connect with.

This is not just about using free digital content to sell physical goods. It's an acknowledgment that what you're selling as an artist (or an author, or a publisher for that matter) is not content. What you sell is providing something that the customer/reader/fan wants.

Social bookmarking tools serve two general purposes: helping you keep track of what you've seen and showing you what you may have missed.

The “OCLC Top 1000” list presents the top works most widely held by libraries. First published in the fall of 2004, the list was most recently updated in 2005. The list reflects true classics and canonical works of western culture. The list also shows the extent to which libraries strive to meet the needs of their readers, by offering books in high demand in any given year. The list contains classic works such as the Bible, utilitarian works such as the U.S. Census and also popular works such as Tom Brokaw’s Greatest Generation.

There is a revolution happening on the Internet that is alive and building momentum with each passing tag. With the advent of social software and Web 2.0, we usher in a new era of Internet order. One in which the user has the power to effect their own online experience, and contribute to others’. Today, users are adding metadata and using tags to organize their own digital collections, categorize the content of others and build bottom-up classification systems. The wisdom of crowds, the hive mind, and the collective intelligence are doing what heretofore only expert catalogers, information architects and website authors have done. They are categorizing and organizing the Internet and determining the user experience, and it’s working. No longer do the experts have the monopoly on this domain; in this new age users have been empowered to determine their own cataloging needs. Metadata is now in the realm of the Everyman.