Social Navigation in Digital Libraries by Bookmarking

In the age of Web 2.0, users are increasingly familar with social tagging or bookmarking where comments and ratings are added by users to objects on the web for public consumption. Such comments and ratings are represented in bookmarks which can be used for information or opinion sharing, user interest discovery, and content recommendation. In this paper, we investigate social bookmarking in digital libraries and derive the design requirements for digital library incorporating social bookmarking. Instead of implementing social bookmarking functions in digital library systems from ground zero, we have chosen to explore the possibilities of integrating pre-existing digital library systems with preexisting social bookmarking systems, and to derive a feasible system architectural design. We also present a case study where G-Portal, a geography digital library system, is integrated with Scuttle, an open source social bookmarking system.