april09b.indd Ron Gilmour and Jennifer Stickland Social bookmarking for library services Bibliographic access through Delicious Social bookmarking refers to Internet applica­tions that allow users to collect and label in­ formation resources both for their own use and for sharing with other users. Social bookmarking can be seen as the next step in the evolution of link management. Link management began with the “hot links” in the Mosaic browser. These evolved into the “bookmarks” of Netscape and the “favorites” of Microsoft Inter net Ex­ plorer.1 In all of these cases, lists of links were stored in a hierarchical folder struc­ ture within the browser. Such bookmarks were accessible only from one computer and were difficult to share with others. Social bookmarking allows users to save their bookmarks to the Internet, thereby making them available from any machine and, if desired, also making them visible to other users. A ubiquitous feature of social bookmarking systems is tagging. When a link is selected for bookmarking, the user can specify keywords, or “tags,” with which the link will be associ­ ated. The bookmarking application will make these tags available to other users as a list or as a “tag cloud.” This practice of informal tagging has earned the name “folksonomy,” refl ecting Figure 1. A catalog record with a “tag this item” link to Delicious. the fact that it is a vocabulary developed by end users as opposed to a top­down authorita­ tive taxonomy, such as the Library of Congress subject headings. Social bookmarking is often seen as a sort of anti­authoritarian technology that rejects the type of infor­ mation control t r a d i t i o n a l l y exercised by li­ brarians. Some librarians, in fact, seem to take offense at the idea of tagging. Critics complain that tagging lacks a controlled vo­ cabulary and that, at its worst, it amounts to an “idiosyncratic, indecipherable personal nomenclature.”2 Social bookmarking is also characterized by the use of RSS. This allows easy linking to blogs, another major Web 2.0 application. Users can track certain tags. One could, for instance, be alerted whenever a new posting tagged “bioinformatics” is entered into the system, or one could see any new links that are added by a particular user. This functionality can be a Ron Gilmour is natural sciences librarian, e-mail: rgilmour@ithaca.edu, and Jennifer Strickland is fine arts librarian, e-mail: jstrickland@ithaca.edu, at Ithaca College in Ithaca, New York © 2009 Ron Gilmour and Jennifer Strickland 234C&RL News April 2009 mailto:jstrickland@ithaca.edu mailto:rgilmour@ithaca.edu powerful tool for current awareness and offers a way to integrate tagged content into existing blogs and Web pages. Filmographies At Ithaca College, our work with Delicious be­ gan with a request from a faculty member for us to add Library of Congress (LC) subject headings to indicate the presence of Asian stereotypes in Hollywood feature films, such as Breakfast at Tiffany’s. This is not the type of information that LC subject headings were designed to describe, as it indicates a commentarial aspect of a fi lm, not what the film is about. Consequently, the cataloging department saw this as impractical and possibly contrary to good cataloging prac­ tice. However, adding such subject access would certainly increase the usefulness of this collection. The case of Asian stereo­ types is by no means unique. We are often confronted with faculty mem­ bers who make use of fi lms in their classes in ways that are not reflected by LC subject headings. A professor of television and radio requested such DVD sets as Seinfeld and Sex and the City for their frequent restaurant scenes, with the intention of showing examples of how to light indoor spaces. A pro­ fessor of religion assigned a list of feature fi lms so that his students may analyze the treatment of the afterlife in popular culture. A third profes­ sor wanted to assemble a list of fi lms depicting people with disabilities. All of these examples illustrate cases in which a library user requires access points not available through traditional subject headings, which are often too broad, too specific, puzzling, or apparently arbitrary. Take, for example, the recent fi lm Across the Figure 2. Screen capture of a Delicious page in its native form. Visit this article online for detailed images. Universe. It has been assigned the subject head­ ing “Stevedores England Liverpool Drama.” The term “stevedores” is antiquated, and it is unlikely that the average library user would ever think to use it. A patron may, however, want a fi lm about the 1960s or the Vietnam War. Social bookmarking offers a means of adding access points to materials in the library catalog without the more time­consuming alteration of the catalog record. This assumes, of course, that the library’s catalog offers stable URLs. Tagging materials is a very simple procedure and can be performed by library staff that may not be familiar with HTML.3 At Ithaca College, we have even added “tag this item” links to our catalog records to facilitate the tagging process (see fig. 1). Edit­ ing the results is much easier than manipu­ lating a static Web page, and multiple authors sharing a com­ mon account can work on a tagging project simultaneously. A page based on Delicious data is a live feed, and users will see new bookmarks as they are added. In addition, short annotations may be added to the links (e.g., “note Andy Rooney’s portrayal of Mr. Yunioshi”). Lists can be combined with a Boolean “and” by using a plus sign in the URL (e.g., delicious.com/iclibref/environmen­ tal_studies+biology). Since the end product is a publicly accessible Web page, it is easy to share the results with others. Your Delicious Delicious makes its data available via JavaScript Object Notation (JSON). This allows Web de­ signers to easily incorporate Delicious content into Web pages using JavaScript (delicious. April 2009 235 C&RL News Figure 3. Screen capture of an Ithaca Library Web page that displays data from Delicious. com/help/json/). On the Delicious Web site, our environmental studies bookmarks appear as in fig. 2. We feel that linking directly to the Delicious site may be confusing to users and prefer to put our own brand on the content. Consequently, we use JSON objects to allow us to display Delicious content inside our normal Web template (see fi g. 3). The JSON interface to Delicious is easy to use for anyone with a little JavaScript experience. It simply requires an http request to Delicious: The results are made available as the JavaS­ cript array Delicious.posts. This array can then be iterated through and the results displayed as follows: In this code example, the variable post.u contains the URL for the bookmark and post.d contains its title. If desired, the annotation can be displayed using post.n. JSON also allows the links to be sorted alphabetically using JavaScript and for links from multiple tags to be collected on one page. The ability to mix links from different tag sets is especially important since it allows the display of more than 100 items (the normal limit for how many links Delicious will display). In order to circumvent this limit, we created multiple tag sets for subjects with a large number of bookmarks. So, for instance, we split our large biology collection into “biology” and “biologyI.” We use JavaScript to pull the results from these multiple tags into an array, sort the array, and display the results. Alternately, one can make use of the Delicious ap­ plication programming interface (API) rather than JSON if the limit of 100 items becomes problematic. The Delicious API allows users with program­ ming experience to manipulate items in their col­ lection of bookmarks (delicious.com/help/api/). The API defines ways to pass queries to Delicious using http. Many scripting languages, including Perl 4 and PHP 5, offer packages that serve as wrappers for the API, making it possible to write scripts in those languages that make use of Delicious data. In addition to these tools, we have written a PHP class called DeliciousPosts 6 that uses the “post/all” method to retrieve all of the bookmarks for a given tag, not just the most recent 100 that are allowed by the JSON interface. DeliciousPosts also caches the results of a query such that the Delicious API service is not unduly burdened. After downloading DeliciousPosts, it may be invoked from a PHP script as follows: showPosts($tag); ?> Conclusion Social bookmarking has enabled us to solve a 236C&RL News April 2009 JN The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (AJCN) Since 1952, an essential resource for important basic and clinical research studies relevant to human nutrition. T O P I C S I N C L U D E t Obesity & Eating Disorders t Nutrition & Cancer t Nutritional Epidemiology & Public Health t Gene­Nutrient Interactions t Vitamins, Minerals, & Phytochemicals t Nutrition & Cardiovascular Disease Risk The Journal of Nutrition (JN) Since 1928, a premier forum for the publication of peer­reviewed research in all aspects of experi­ mental nutrition. T O P I C S I N C L U D E t Biochemical, Molecular, & Genetic Mechanisms t Nutrition & Disease t Genomics, Proteomics, & Metabolomics t Nutritional Methodologies & Mathematical Modeling t Ingestive Behavior & Nutritional Neurosciences Impact Factor 6.603 #1 among peer­reviewed research journals in the Nutrition and Dietetics category Total Citations 34,225 #1 among peer­reviewed research journals in the Nutrition and Dietetics category Eigenfactor #2 for overall journal quality #1 for cost­effectiveness Impact Factor 3.771 #3 among peer­reviewed research journals in the Nutrition and Dietetics category Total Citations 27,371 #2 among peer­reviewed research journals in the Nutrition and Dietetics category Eigenfactor #1 for overall journal quality #2 for cost­effectiveness Print & Online $660 $710 Online Only $625 $625 U.S. Can/Mex Print & Online $470 $495 $520 Online Only $455 $455 $455 U.S. Can/Mex ROW "�1VCMJDBUJPO�PG�UI F�"NFSJDBO�4PDJFU Z�GPS�/VUSJUJPO�t�XX X�OVUSJUJPO�PSH Availability of arginine to the fetus in sheep Production of 1-C unit s from glycine in men and women Iron and neuronal dev elopment in mouse hi ppocampus Supplements: 8th International Sym posium on Soy in Hea lth and Disease Preve ntion Towards Establishing Dietary Reference Inta kes for Eicosapentaen oic and Docosahexaen oic Acids THE JOURNAL OF NUTRITIO N "QSJM������t�7PMVNF�� ���t�/VNCFS�� A P R IL 2009 P ages 635–820 4 _____________________________ _____________________________ _____________________________ _______________________________ _______________________________ _______________________________ M A I L O R F A X T O : American Society for Nutrition 9650 Rockville Pike Bethesda, MD 20814 USA Fax: 301­634­7892 journal@nutrition.org Yes, I would like to order The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition Yes, I would like to order The Journal of Nutrition Send me a pro­ ! ­forma invoice Pay through your subscription agent. Submit this completed form to your subscription agent. Send an invoice to my subscription agent: Agency: Attention: _____________________________ Agency City, State: _____________________________ Institution/Library Mailing Address _______________________________ SUBSCRIBE TODAY! 2 0 0 9 I N S T I T U T I O N A L S U B S C R I P T I O N R A T E S 2 0 0 9 I N S T I T U T I O N A L S U B S C R I P T I O N R A T E S ajcn.nutrition.org jn.nutrition.org t Community & International Nutrition American Society for Nutrition High Impact Nutrition Research at Excellence in Nutrition Research and Practice www.nutrition.org an Exceptional Value problem of bibliographic access without recourse to modification of cataloging practice. The process of tagging resources in Deli­ cious is very simple. A variety of tools are available to allow creative and flexible use of the data, including its incorporation into existing library pages or templates. We posted links to the filmographies to the appropriate library subject guides on the Web. Response from faculty members to these Delicious­based filmographies has been very positive. Professors find that it is now far easier to locate appropriate films for their classes. It also offers a way for the library to promote special collections of films, such as those purchased for portrayal of Asians. This success has encouraged us to explore other ways of using Delicious, including new book lists, resource lists for individual classes, and even lists designed to answer specific reference questions. Notes 1. Tony Hammond, Timo Hannay, Ben Lund, and Joanna Scott, “Social Book­ marking Tools (I),” D-Lib Magazine, 11 (2005), www.dlib.org/dlib/april05 /hammond/04hammond.html. 2. John Maxymuk, “Bits & Bytes: Whose Space?” Bottom Line: Managing Library Fi- nances, 20 (2007):97–100. 3. Meslissa L. Rethlefsen, “Tags Help Make Libraries Delicious,” Library Jour nal, 132 (2007):26–28. 4. Stephan Schmidt and Tatsuya Tsu­ ruoka, Package Information: Services _Delicious, see pear.php.net/package /Services_Delicious. 5. Aaron Straup Cope, Net::Delicious, v i s i t s e a r c h . c p a n . o r g / ~ a s c o p e / N e t ­Delicious­1.13/lib/Net/Delicious.pm. 6. Ron Gilmour, DeliciousPosts.php, see rongilmour.info/software/deliciousposts. April 2009 237 C&RL News http:Delicious-1.13/lib/Net/Delicious.pm www.dlib.org/dlib/april05 http:www.nutrition.org