Hi, I’m Mark Swihart, a professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering at the University at Buffalo.
Have you ever experienced the frustration of discovering a great article or website and never being able to find it again?
Citation management and social bookmarking tools help you categorize and organize websites, blogs, articles and media for future reference.
Using tools like these is one of the quickest ways to de-clutter your office and computer because they provide a place online for the resources to reside online until you need to find them again.
Both individuals – and groups – can manage resources in flexible ways.
At the heart of collecting a resource library is the concept of “tagging.” When you tag something, you attach a keyword description to it, like a category or topic.
Tagging helps categorize and share resources. If you’ve ever seen a subject heading in the library catalog, or a hashtag in a social media post, then you are already familiar with tagging.
Unlike library subject cataloging, which follows a strict set of guidelines like the Library of Congress subject headings, tagging is entirely unstructured and free-form. You select the terms that hold meaning to you.
It’s a little like the “Bookmarks” or “Favorites” folders in your browser, only better.
Citation management and social bookmarking allow you to see how others have tagged similar resources; and discover new items of interest.
Citation management tools are best at organizing scholarly resources like journal articles and books. They simplify creating bibliographies formatted in APA, MLA, or other custom styles.
Go beyond organizing references to books, articles, and websites.
Social bookmarking tools are suited for other materials, such as websites, videos, images, and other resources.
Both citation management tools and social bookmarking sites help you create collections out of whatever online resources you need to build a library.
Check out the citation management and social bookmarking tools in this MOOC to get yourself organized!