Would Cutter agree with Social Bookmarking?

In everything there are strengths and weaknesses -card catalogs, OPAC’s, and the Internet are not perfect. But what is important is embracing the direction in which information is moving. Back to my question, would Charles Ammi Cutter agree with social bookmarking tools? Some would say, “Absolutly not!”  - while others would say, “He would think it was a Del.ico.us way to catagorize information”.  I myself am a Reference Librarian, so I stand by what the FRBR defined in 1998, that a library catalog's goals and functions should follow four user tasks: find, identify, select, and obtain. The Internet consists of a vast amount of information in a variety of formats and we need to look to new ways to catagorize this information. Even though social bookmarking has been around since 1996, it was only a matter a time before this form of cataloging blew up the scene. It only seems necessary that “folks –y” start cataloging the mass amount of information on the Internet. We need some way to keep track and classify the information on the Web – Social Bookmarking helps untangle the information we discovered and create ways for us to use it over and over.  

Libraries can be a cool place to use social bookmarking, whether it is for staff or patrons. I hope to set up a Del.ico.us account for librarians to use at the Reference desk. Right now we have about 100 bookmarks saved in favorites, some in folders but many just haphazardly thrown in – for a quick fix. However, I notice that in a hurry to find answers, it is much easier to look it up again in Google then it is to sort through the mess of saved favorites. Also, subject guides would be a great way to use social bookmarking for reference. We also have two Consumer Health Librarians and social bookmarking specific information for them would be highly useful. RSS feeds would also help them greatly!  There LOTS of ways libraries can take part in using social bookmarking tools to categorize the web of information we encounter everyday!