Library clips

I’m still grappling with the best way to use del.icio.us, the old public vs. personal issue, and its lacking of some essential features. I’d really like to do some tag management, and am not sure what road to take, I’d also like to know what features (big or small) del.icio.us will release in the near future as this will have impact on the way I decide to tag.

1. Boolean

eg. tags: “library”, “blogs”

If I want to look at my library bookmarks I view my “library” tag, and If I want to look at my blog bookmarks I view my “blogs” tag.

If I want to look at bookmarks with both these tags I can intersect them, “library+blogs”.

But what if I want to look at my bookmarks tagged “library” that are not about blogs…I can’t do that (unlike Simpy)

…same goes if I want to look at my bookmarks tagged “blogs” that are not about libraries.

The lack of this simple feature may move me to bookmark a different way…a way that doesn’t help the emerging folksonomy, ie. detrimental to the public vocabulary.

2. Awkward tags

As a result I may use the tags: “library_blogs”, instead of “library” “blogs”, to tag a bookmark about libraries and blogs…but the tag “library_blogs” is not very beneficial for the del.icio.us community at large.

3. Preferred tags

Which do I use, or do I use a few to cover the bases…I really only one to use one.

rss+reader, rssreader, rss_reader or feed+reader, feedreader, feed_reader or news+reader, newsreader, news_reader or rss+aggregator, rssaggregator, rss_aggregator or feed+aggregator, feedaggregator, feed_aggregator or news+aggregator, newsaggregator, news_aggregator, and so on…(if you add an “s” to the end of “reader”, and “aggregator” this has doubled the choices).

I suppose this is an issue in all social bookmarks.

I forgot to mention there is sometimes an issue at the community level for adding multiple terms
eg. public+rss+reader

If I click the tag “public”, I may see a bookmark for a public rss reader eg. SuprGlu, the tag “public” doesn’t seem specific enough on its own to describe this bookmark.
But that’s OK because this is my bookmark collection, so I know what it may refer to (early days yet)
…and since it is my personal collection I am prompted to refine this by adding (AND) another tag, or to simply just view this related tag on its own.

But at the community level a bookmark about SuprGlu would seem like noise in a tag like “public”
…at the community level there is no prompt to refine, there is only a selection of the most popular related tags (other tags people applied to a bookmark that has the tag “public”)…it would be a little help if you could add the related tag to do an AND search, just like in your personal account.

4. Fields

I find that when looking at my collection I wish I tagged in facets, that is, if I tag a journal article about libraries with the tag “library” I wish I also used the tag “journal_article”, that way I could distinguish my bookmarks on libraries that are; blog posts, journal articles, news articles, websites, how-to, forum posts, etc…

But again some of these tags create noise at the community level, especially the tag “websites”…nearly everything is a website.
I know del.icio.us was developed for personal retrieval, and the social features were a bonus, but I still think we can use it to do the least harm at the community level.
In this example the tag “library websites” is much more precise, but the only way to do this in del.icio.us is “librarywebsites”, “library_websites”, etc…

Anyway, instead of using the tag field, for which I like to reserve for subject terms, I’d like to see more fields in del.icio.us so at the time of bookmarking we can choose from a number of facet fields, the subject facet field for me would be the tag field.
This way the tag cloud could be like a subject term cloud, and we could have other clouds for the other facets…cleaner field, makes a cleaner index.

The tag field answers the question, “what is this object about?”, and a document type field answers the question, “what is this object?”, etc…

Furl even has a field for read or unread, and you can sort your bookmarks to see just unread bookmarks (even at the tag level), they also have a private/public field, as does del.icio.us, neither service has a sort for this feature.
A lot of the time I bookmark a webpage but haven’t read the content yet, so I’m only going by the title, but I bookmark it the best I can and that’s it…in this case my tags may be too broad or incorrect.
For these cases I would like to select the private field, and then once a week sort by this field and re-tag with more knowledgable tags.

In the end providing these extra fields will keep the tag field cleaner…I’d even like to create my own personal field types.

See related content at an earlier post, del.icio.us with facets, also web 2.0 lists and profile bookmarking.

5. Descriptors

I’d also like to split the tag field (subject terms) in two, into Major and Minor Descriptors, ie. if a bookmark is a little bit about libraries but mostly about something else, the tag “library” will go in the minor tag field. If the bookmark is mostly about libraries, then the tag “library” will go in the major tag field.

Then we could display this with 2 tag clouds, one for major tags, the other for minor tags.

Having an extra field is the only way to do this, otherwise we have to resort to noisy tags like “minor:library”
…see more.

This would be great if you use del.icio.us as a tag index for your blog posts, you could have 2 tag clouds of aboutness.

6. Bundles

I like the idea of tag bundles, I can tag with abandon, and then collect the numerous tags under the one cloud, but the problem is what if I want to see all the bookmarks for each tag in the bundle…I can’t as the tag bundle doesn’t have it’s own URL.
I can’t see why not, when the inbox has this feature, even its own feed.

If my bundle is on “knowledge management”, when ever I tag a bookmark: “knowledge_sharing”, “knowledge_audit”, “social_network_analysis”, “tacit_knowledge”, “knowledge_transfer”, “communities_of_practice”, etc…I have to make sure I also use the tag “knowledge management” to kind of act like the bucket or folder, as the tag bundle lacks an URL.
The other tradeoff is that I may only want to use the tag “knowledge management” for bookmarks that are about this topic in general, not for the more specfic topics like “social_network_analysis”…and I can’t do a NOT search, a dead end we covered before.

When you accumulate a lot of tags it is sometimes cognitvely annoying, not the strain of choosing a tag as happens in categories, but moreso making sure that you have gone through your tag set, making sure you have applied every tag that suits…the consistency issue
…and you will have lots of tags to go through if all your tags are single terms and need to be built up later for retrieval (using the +, eg. email+outlook+rss+reader).

A way around this would be for the bookmarklet to have a tag bundle display of the tags, this would make it much easier and quicker.

7. Searching

At the moment del.icio.us searches in all fields at once, I’d like to search just in the tag field, or even search for a string of characters, and get hits wherever that string exists in a tag.
Firstly if you search for the string “reader” in the tag field, I’d like to see all bookmarks only with that tag
…alternately you could select a box, before you submit, and this would return various tags with the string “reader”, eg. opmlreader, opml_reader, rssreader rss_reader, e-reader, newsreader, news_reader, advanced_reader, barcode_reader, etc…

Anyway, see Simpy for great searching:
- boolean
- phrase
- wildcard
- stemming
- optional
- fielded (tag, title, description)
- user field
- group field (I think)
- combine fields
- full-text
- popularity
- relevance
- site field
- file extension field

See related content at an earlier post, Tag searching wishlist.

Imagine using Simpy to bookmark your blog posts:
- browse a post by tag
- search a post within the tag field, title field, etc…
- search full-text

They also provide a search box for your blog…you just can’t go wrong…all they need is a tagroll, plus your blog posts can even automatically bookmark to Simpy when you hit publish.

I haven’t come across a blog yet that has journal database or library catalogue type searching…Simpy will do just this for your blog.

What about a calendar like Jots (click on a user), Simpy does have a date list, but calendars are nice.

8. Tagroll

As mentioned before a lot of people, especially blogger users, like to use del.icio.us as categories/tags for their blog, so the tagroll is the perfect fix.
Only problem is clicking on a tag launches to the bookmark service (del.icio.us), what if it could launch a little pop-up box instead with the mobile version of del.icio.us for easy rendering…this would still feel inhouse to some extent.
I like this idea as you can have tags for your blog, plus your inhouse categories…I’m inclined to also tag posts with the category labels as well, this way if I want to see all posts from 2 categories I can…oops I forgot del.icio.us doesn’t do OR searches…but it will do AND searches.

Simpy is sounding really tempting…a tagroll might clench it for me as far as using it to tag my blog posts.
As mentioned I’d like to click on the tagroll but see the contents within the blog (but this is too techie to set up), maybe an ajax box could drop down when I click on a tag showing me the contents…wow, RawSugar does this, click on the directory box in this blog (you can also add a full-text search box).
Not sure if the directory box can contain all your tags, or if you can just have a tag cloud.

NOTE: RawSugar also automatically bookmarks when you publish a blog post, it has folders, the search is fielded, and guided…plus more.

Next I’d need a bookmarklet to tag my posts at the user level at the bookmark service…I’d also want this bookmarklet to tag my posts at the Technorati user level at the same time.
eg.
My Technorati Tags: blogs, libraries, social
Local Tags: blogs, libraries, social

These both go to the user level space, the “Local Tags” refers to the bookmark service.

[ADDED: Netvouz looks damn good as well.]

At the moment it is a fight between del.icio.us, Simpy, RawSugar, and netvouz…I think RawSugar may be the ultimate winner for tagging my blog posts.

The focus of this post really changed, sorry about that…

I’m looking for a research focused bookmarking/clipping tool that will allow to clip and tag sections or paragraphs of a webpage…this bookmarking tool would be more for personal use than social.

Using a tool like this would be handy if you are researching for a paper or thesis, etc…it is a more granular form of bookmarking, as the idea is to not only bookmark a webpage URL, but also to bookmark sections within by perhaps giving them their own anchor URL’s. What I mean by an anchor URL, is a URL that takes you to a specific point on a page, usually denoted by a # symbol
eg. http://libraryclips.blogsome.com/2006/05/04/770/#comment-30614

clipmarks

clipmarks is a different sort of bookmarking service as each each bookmark you save has its own permalink…the main feature is that you can clip a section or multiple sections of a page. When you view a bookmark in your user space you will see these clipped sections, this not only helps remember why you bookmarked this URL, but displays just the contents you want to see from this webpage without having to launch to the webpage itself.

Not only can you clip multiple sections from the one webpage, but you can clip multiple sections from more than one webpage.
This is amazing, this bookmark in your user space will refer to multiple webpages (URL’s), not only that but the clips from each webpage (URL) will be displayed in this one bookmark.

Since each of your bookmarks has a permalink you could clip stuff from multiple webpages and store these clips in the one bookmark, then pass that bookmark URL to a friend where all the information required is in the one page. But then again you could bookmark/clip all these webpages separatley and apply the same tags, and pass the tag URL to a friend.

Another use would be if you are following a blog conversation, you could clip sections from various blogs in the conversation, give it a tag/s and view all this content in one bookmark in your user space. When you view a bookmark the clips are separated by a line, it would be good if you could include some text between these clips, this way it would be like a review of a blog conversation.
This is kind of like bookmarking/clipping/blogging in the one go…anyway this is getting into publishing whereas the focus of my post is personal research…although including some text between each clip would be great for leaving notes about each clip.

Of course like all web2.0 bookmark services you apply tag/s to the webpage at the time of bookmarking, assign the bookmark to a folder, and also leave a description, which again helps later on in remembering what the page is about
…clipmarks has loads more social features, but I’m just examining the features relevant to this post.

research version

What I would need is a research version of clipmarks as a personal bookmarking tool, the modified features are listed below.

When you bookmark/clip a webpage I would like to tag each clip, and as mentioned above, annotate each clip.

Later on when I view this bookmark (permalink) in my user space, I can either scroll to view all the clips (like usual), or (as proposed) click on a tag from the tag list for this bookmark, and this would show just those clips from this bookmark with that tag, or at least bring them to the top with a more definite line separating them from the other clips.
At the moment if you are viewing a bookmark and you click on a tag from that bookmark, it will show you other bookmarks with that tag, this is good, but I would like to extend this by having a tiny symbol on each tag, clicking this will show me the clipped sections with this tag from the one bookmark.

Here’s a random sample of what a clipmark looks like:
- I bookmarked a page
- clipped three sections
- applied two tags
- applied a folder
- added a title
- added a remark

NOTE: you can print it, email it…others and myself can leave comments and even vote for the bookmark, this is great if you are researching with others and would like to share and discuss your findings, and rank the great finds.

I mentioned this tool more for personal use, but a social version would be good if you could form your own research groups, a mini folksonomy for your research.

I’d also like to be able to generate a bibliography for all my bookmarks, choosing a style, just like Furl.

Recap

This is great for research, you could bookmark a webpage (eg. 40 page essay), and clip, tag, and annotate numerous sections/paragraphs.
Not every tag needs to relate to a clipped section, you can apply tags to the whole bookmark in general (these tags will not have a symbol next to them).

When you view the permalink for this bookmark in your user space you would see the title and remarks you have made, and the folder it lives in…you would scroll the contents of the bookmark, viewing all the clipped sections.

You would see the tag list for this bookmark, clicking on a symbol next to the tag would show only the clipped sections with that tag…clicking on the tag itself will show you other bookmarks that have that tag.

Maybe you could also have another symbol next to each tag, clicking on this would show all clips with this tag from various bookmarks in your account.

e-snips and Net Snippets may be a similar options, I haven’t used these extensively myself…if anyone has let me know…at a glance e-snips includes storage for non-web documents, and groups.

Another option

Maybe we don’t need a sophisticated service like clipmarks, maybe we could mashup del.icio.us and purpleslurple.

Purple Slurple (via a bookmarklet) will make anchor hyperlinks (labelled with a number) to each paragraph on a webpage, this means that you can generate a URL that will open to an exact spot on that webpage…here’s an example (look for the purple hyperlinks).

Imagine if you could find a webpage you want to bookmark, hit the purpleslurple bookmarklet to anchor each paragraph…next to the paragraphs/sections of your choosing you can apply a tag/s in the box provided, then scroll to the top to apply a general tag/s for the whole webpage and a description, then submit.

Now your del.icio.us user space would look as per usual, the tags for that bookmark include both the general and section tags (maybe the section tags can be non-hyperlinked), and as usual clicking on a tag will show you other bookmarks with that tag.

The difference would be when you click on a bookmark title to launch to the native webpage, at the top of the webpage you would see a navigator bar that simply lists the tags you applied to this page.
Clicking on a general tag won’t do anything, it will just stay at the top of the webpage, but if you click on a section tag it will take you to the first occurence, from this section you can click on a hyperlink to the next section with the same tag, or click a hyperlink to go back to the top.

Maybe the section tags on the navigator bar (at the top of your webpage) could have numbers 1, 2, 3, etc…hyperlinked next to each tag, each number is a section with that tag, hovering your mouse over the number could display the first sentence of that section.

eg.
GENERAL TAGS - tagA, tagB, tagC
SECTION TAGS - tagD 1, 2, 3 - tagE - tagF 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 - tagA 1, 2 - tagH1, 2, 3

NOTE: tagE doesn’t have a number as only one section has been tagged with tagE
…also a general tag and a section tag could have the same name.

More

This can also apply to other media, like audio (podcasts), video, screencasts, etc…
As you listen to an audio file or watch a video or screencast from within your bookmark manager you could pause and tag time ranges as you went along…time tagging, that sounds fun…you would also apply the tags at the general level.

Clicking on a general tag would show, for example, all your bookmarks (podcasts) with that tag (as usual)
…clicking on a bookmark would display its own section tags…clicking a section tag would launch the audio from the first section applied with that tag, then it would pause and you could go to the next section that also has that tag.

Maybe you could also have a section tag cloud for your whole account, clicking on a tag will cue every bookmark (audio file) with that section tag, ready to play from that point.

This is similar to a table of contents or scenes on a DVD, but it is more like an index as you can group a bunch of scenes…”give me a list of all the scenes in this DVD (object or bookmark) I have tagged “car chase”…give me a list of all the scenes from all my DVD’s (bookmarks) I have tagged “car chase”.

Actually, that’s what this is all about, it is index tagging for the one document, whether that document is one webpage or a bunch of webpages.

Leave a comment if you have any thoughts, or examples of granular tagging?