By Bev Butula, assistant director of library of services, Davis & Kuelthau, Milwaukee
June 3, 2009 – The number of quality websites on the Internet leads many to collecting a significant amount of “favorite” bookmarks. Eventually, this list can become unruly or unmanageable. A basic solution is to create topical folders, moving saved websites to an appropriate location. Possible folder titles could include case law, news, courts, legislation, search engines, or business research.
This basic approach is sufficient for a limited number of bookmarks. However, it can become difficult to remember each site’s location or content for a larger quantity of favorites. In response to this problem, numerous online options exist to help manage an individual’s saved websites. Common features of these applications include the availability of adding descriptive comments, tags (labels), and custom titles. Many also support advanced sorting functionality.
A small sampling of these tools includes:
• Google Bookmarks – A Google account is necessary. Features include the ability to name the website, add a detailed description, and assign labels, or topics for easy access. All the information entered is searchable. The list is private (cannot be viewed by others) since it is tied to a Google account.
• Yahoo! Bookmarks – Bookmarks created in Yahoo! include a title, general summary, and tags. Users can also create folders to organize the websites further. Yahoo! Bookmarks is fully searchable. This tool offers the user several options, or views, to display the favorites. One of these options is the “grid view,” which includes a thumbnail image of each website. Users need a Yahoo! account.
• Delicious – This is considered a “social bookmarking” site because others can view the saved websites. It was designed for individuals to share their favorites with friends, colleagues, etc. Many users, however, choose to have their list made private so that only they have access to the information. Similar to the other examples, users create a title, commentary, and tags or labels. Delicious has additional search and sorting functionality. This online tool permits the user to search both their bookmarked sites, as well as, others.
• Diigo – In addition to creating a description and tags for websites, this tool allows the user to highlight and create “post-its.” This ability to annotate bookmarks is beneficial for research. Diigo is also a social bookmarking site, meaning the user needs to elect if sites are for public or private viewing.
Maintaining a simple list of bookmarks can make it difficult to locate a particular website. A possible solution is to use an online or browser tool to manage bookmarks. An additional benefit of using some of these online tools is having access to bookmarks from any computer.
Bev Butula is the assistant director of library of services at Davis & Kuelthau, Milwaukee. She is a past president of the Law Librarians Association of Wisconsin. Bev has written articles and spoken to numerous groups on issues such as effective Internet research, evaluation of websites, and legal research. Prior to obtaining her Master's Degree in Library Science from UWM, Bev was litigation paralegal.
