I have not used a social bookmarking site for research or annotation before so I decided to explore Diigo. I wondered what could possibly be social about bookmarking one's links to information on the web?

Once I signed in to Diigo, I was given a choice to access the free version or pay for additional services with no ads, the ability to add a thousand highlights, or a professional service that allows for unlimited PDF annotation and outliners. Of course at this exploratory stage I only signed on for the free and unlimited bookmarks service. I also added the Diigolet button on my favorites bar so it would be easy for me to add more bookmarks as I journey through the web. The Diigolet, once I am signed in, will let me highlight, add a sticky note, make comments, do a screen capture, add tags, and save to my account. Later, if I am looking for a particular article to read, I can return to my Diigo account and look through my library to find what I am looking for. If my library becomes cumbersome, I could search for any particular article by the tags I created. This is definitely a great organizing tool.

I think Diigo could be very useful for people who do a lot of research and need to keep their bookmarks in one place. An advantage to using a web based tool is the ability to access the links from any computer connected to the web. The highlighting tool keeps the focus on key passages within an article, which can be especially useful for research. I think the ability to add a sticky note and make annotations is an especially useful tool. I cannot count the number of times I have jotted down ideas while reading articles and subsequently lost those ideas along with the bits of notepaper I wrote them on. For bloggers, Diigo is an invaluable tool. The unlimited highlights and outliners of the professional service would add another layer of organization for bookmarks and help keep track of all the articles read in preparation for each blog.

But where does the social part come in? There are groups on the Diigo based on the interests of the users. While each user has their own library, there are tabs that show my groups or my community or networks. One can join a group for educators or web 2.0 for example, and find links to articles that others have found for that topic. Students in a particular class doing research together can create their own group and easily share their research. Teachers can join these class groups and add comments or help to direct the focus of the group by adding new articles.

#bookmarks #users #social #service #organization