On libraries and social bookmarking sites

Amanda at blogwithoutalibrary.net has posted about libraries using del.icio.us. I have been thinking about this a lot recently and am now going to share some of the random thoughts I have been having.

I am surprised more libraries aren’t integrating social bookmarking into their websites. I wonder how many have opened accounts to their patrons? How many allow patron tagging? Do any libraries offer classes in how to use social bookmarking applications? Is there anyway libraries could get their patrons working together to rank and order bookmarks related to local interests? Maybe a library could work with local newspapers to develop such a system. Maybe a library could work with local schools to help students collaborate on research projects using social bookmarking applications. I wonder if any teachers or school librarians have experimented with anything like this.

It is cool that San Matteo uses Dewey, but isn’t that making a simple concept overly complicated? Dewey was designed for classification of physical objects where each item could only be located in one spot. Tagging allows digital objects to exist in many places at once.

I need to look more closely at what libraries are already doing with social bookmarking sites. I also need to look more closely at what libraries are doing with Flickr and social photosharing sites. I will share more ideas on this later.