Social Bookmarking in Libraries

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.

PennTags is a social bookmarking tool for locating, organizing, and sharing your favorite online resources. Members of the Penn Community can collect and maintain URLs, links to journal articles, and records in Franklin, our online catalog and VCat, our online video catalog. Once these resources are compiled, you can organize them by assigning tags (free-text keywords) and/or by grouping them into projects, according to your specific preferences. PennTags can also be used collaboratively, because it acts as a repository of the varied interests and academic pursuits of the Penn community, and can help you find topics and users related to your own favorite online resources. PennTags was developed by librarians at the University of Pennsylvania.

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.