Library clips

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?