Features – Searching for Bookmark Management Solutions: Clickgardens, Backflips and the Trails of Breadcrumbs

As a research tool, the Web has often been compared to the ancient Library of Alexandria, a vast repository of all the world’s knowledge. Too often, though, the Web seems like a great library where the card catalogs have been shredded and all of the books have been knocked off the shelves and scattered all over the floor.

Even when you find a valuable resource, it can be difficult to find your way back to it. You begin to feel like Hansel and Gretel, finding that the trail of breadcrumbs you cleverly left to guide you back has been eaten by the forest birds.

So we find that we are continuing to battle the two major problems of web research – finding information in the first place, and then returning to it when we need it – with only limited success.

We definitely are losing ground on the front of finding things. Search engines are increasingly out of date and include a diminishing fraction of the Web, especially new information. As search engines increasingly focus on “business model,” “profitability” and “pay to play,” their results seem to become less and less reliable and useful.

Anyone who has submitted a web page to a search engine recently has learned how long it takes to get listed in a search engine and how difficult it is to get a page onto the list of responses for the obvious queries. Trying to search for a page that you know is on the Web when you do not have the URL handy can be a maddening exercise and, at times, will make you wonder why you use search engines at all.

The shortcomings of the search engines have placed a premium on being able to return to excellent resources once you find them. The basic tool that allows you to return to previously-visited sites is well-known to most readers of this article – a form of shortcut called the “bookmark” or the “favorite.” I contend that this simple tool has become the most valuable resource heavy users of the Web can have and that extensive collections of bookmarks can be treasure troves. The purpose of this article is to help you tap into that treasure and put it to work for you.

Bookmarks and Favorites – The Basics

Historically, the term “favorite” is used in connection with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and the term “bookmark” is used in connection with Netscape’s Navigator. Bookmark is an older term and tends to be used more generically, especially by longtime users of the Web. I’ll generally use “bookmark” throughout this article to refer to both terms.

Bear with me a moment for a quick review. Assume that you are using Internet Explorer 5 and you have found a web site that you want to keep. You go to the dropdown menu category of “Favorites.” There you’ll find a choice called “Add to favorites.” Click on that choice and you’ll get a selection box that allow you to add a link to that the page to your Favorites list, put the link into an existing subfolder in your Favorites list, add a new subfolder to place the link into, or even make a copy of the page available to you for offline viewing.

Once you’ve added the page to your favorites list, you can again go to the favorites dropdown menu and you’ll find a link to that page on your list of favorites. Simply clicking on that item will take you back to that page on the Internet. In other words, placing the item on your favorites list gives you a shortcut method of returning to the page without the need either to remember or to type in the web address (“URL”) of the page. You’ll also notice in the Favorites dropdown menu a choice called “Organize favorites” that allows you to copy and move favorites, set up and move subfolders and delete favorites.

Bookmark Management

Working with and organizing your favorites or bookmarks is generally called “bookmark management.” Longtime users of the Web will remember the early days when bookmark management tools in the browsers did not even allow you to create folders or edit titles of bookmarks. The included bookmark functionality of browsers has come a long way since those early days, but I still find the bookmark management tools built into the browsers to be cumbersome and inadequate.

While researching this article, I found that I’m not alone in that assessment. There are literally hundreds of programs available that can be considered “bookmark managers.” (See, for example, the list at http://www.webwizards.net/useful/wbbm.htm or search for bookmark managers on http://www.dmoz.org). They vary in approach and address one or more of the shortcomings of the bookmark management tools built into browsers. The sheer number of these programs emphasizes the depth of the problem.

Unfortunately, I was not able to check out each and every one of these tools, but I’ve sampled the various categories as part of my ongoing quest to find a solution to my own bookmark management problems. More important, it has become clear to me that your preferred solution to the bookmark management problem is likely to be different from my preferred solution just as your systems for keeping notes, setting up filing systems, naming files and other similar tasks are likely to be different from my systems. In other words, there is an important personal element to how you will best address the issue of unlocking the value of your bookmarks. For this reason, bookmark management is a key part of what is now referred to as “personal knowledge management.”

This article surveys the various approache s to bookmark management, gives examples in each category, discusses some of the strengths and weaknesses of each approach, and then concludes with some of the solutions I’ve found most helpful. I haven’t yet found the complete and definitive answer, but I’ve found some very useful answers.

The Problems with Bookmarks

Overwhelmption – While bookmarks are helpful tools, as a practical matter, their utility swiftly diminishes over the course of time. The biggest problem for a heavy Web user is that the sheer quantity of bookmarks can easily overwhelm the basic browser bookmark tools. As you accumulate a few hundred (or more likely, a few thousand) bookmarks, it becomes nearly impossible to find a specific bookmark in your list. Even a system of subfolders can easily get overwhelmed. Is it easier to find a specific bookmark in ten folders of 100 bookmarks or in 100 folders of ten bookmarks? The answer, of course, is that you probably will not be able to find it easily in either case.

Cumbersome – Assuming, however, that you are one of the few people who does a good job in setting up folders and is rigorous in assigning bookmarks appropriately to the correct folders, you will find the browser organization tools are cumbersome, non-intuitive and time-consuming. Here’s an example: I’ve often simply wanted to print out a list of my bookmarks, including subfolders, so I could mark up the list and make changes later to the folders. I’ve done a lot of research on that specific issue, including a few visits to the Microsoft KnowledgeBase, and have never been able to find an answer (although there are ways to work around the problem and get something close to a workable result).

Subfolders – Even people who use subfolders regularly will run into the problem of proper assignment of bookmarks to folders. When you start making folders, you tend to start with broad categories (“legal research,” “intellectual property,” “music”), but gradually find that what would be most useful would be a much more granular approach (“Intellectual Property – Copyright – Software – Registration – Deposit Materials”). While granularity is an attractive concept, it can turn into a path to frustration. First, you seldom find people who can maintain that type of approach to organization on a consistent basis. Second, you typically do not find time to reorganize your folders into a logical system and transfer file contents to appropriate folders. Third, the more granular your filing system, the less likely it is that you can find something simply. Consider the above example. I might have trouble remembering whether I put a particular bookmark was in the “copyright,” “software,” “registration” or “deposit materials” subfolder if I could not find it on the first try. As a result, I would likely go to a search engine to try to locate the page from scratch rather than continue to rummage through my bookmarks trying to find the right folder. Fourth, many pages fit multiple categories and should be in several folders, something that few people will take the time to do. Fifth, browsers do not include search functionality for bookmark lists.

T itles – Another problem with bookmark lists is that they are simply lists of titles of web pages. They pick up the