Social bookmarking behaviors of college students: A survey of Wuhan University Library users*

Abstract Social bookmarking behaviors of college students: A survey of Wuhan University Library users* Dan WU, Xiaomei XU & Wenting YU School of Information Management, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China Purpose: To have a better understanding of library users social bookmarking behaviors, we conducted a survey of college students to examine how much attention they have paid to social bookmarking results, their social bookmarking motivations and behaviors on book sharing sites and in their library s OPAC, and their expectations to their library s social bookmarking service. Design/methodology/approach: A questionnaire survey was conducted to investigate social bookmarking behaviors and motivations of users of Wuhan University Library (WUL) on book sharing sites and in WUL s OPAC. A total of 700 questionnaires were distributed and 357 valid questionnaires were retrieved. SPSS was used for data analysis. Findings: The results revealed that there were differences between users social bookmarking behaviors on book sharing sites and in the Library s OPAC. Users preferred to use tags than add tags on book sharing sites. The main tagging motivation on book sharing sites was for meeting users specific needs such as collection management and book recommendations. As for the Library, the lack of publicity and promotion of the social bookmarking service led to insufficient use of the Library s service. Due to a lack of knowledge of the social bookmarking service, users did not care about the lectures or publicity campaigns about the Library s social bookmarking service. Research limitations: Because social bookmarking was not common among WUL users, and the questionnaires could be handed out to a limited number of people, it was hard to describe users social bookmarking behaviors in the Library s OPAC by investigating a sample of 357 Library users, and therefore we only investigated users social bookmarking behaviors on the book sharing sites. Received: Dec. 9, 2013 Revised: Dec. 20, 2013 Accepted: Dec. 23, 2013 Translated with a permission from Library Tribune (in Chinese), 2013, 33(4): 42 Practical implications: The survey results provide insights into library users social bookmarking behaviors and motivations. The study will help academic libraries improve their social bookmarking service. Originality/value: In spite of growing popularity of social bookmarking sites, little has been known about the social bookmarking behaviors of library users. This study investigated * This work is partly supported by the National Youth Top-notch Talent Support Program of China. Corresponding author: Dan Wu (E-mail: woodan@whu.edu.cn). CJLIS Vol. 6 No. 3, 2013 pp 15 30 http://www.chinalibraries.net 15

Chinese Journal of Library and Information Science Vol. 6 No. 3, 2013 college students social bookmarking behaviors and motivations, providing suggestions for academic libraries to improve their social bookmarking services. Keywords Social bookmarking behavior; Social bookmark; Tagging; Rating; Academic libraries 1 Introduction Bookmarking is the practice of saving the address of a website a user wishes to visit in the future on his/her computer. Social bookmarking is the practice that a user saves bookmarks to a public website and tags them with natural language keywords expressing ideas or notations that the user deems relevant to the bookmarks [1]. To create a collection of social bookmarks, a user needs to register with a social bookmarking site, which allows the user to store bookmarks, add tags of his or her choice, rate and comment on books, and designate individual bookmarks as public or private. Meanwhile, users can share the information by inviting others to view, comment, rate and give feedback. The fact that the same resource has been tagged by more users allows for drawing connections between various users collections and mutually tagged resources. It thus supports knowledge discovery, tag suggestion, and insight into resource popularity and interests and trends of users and communities [2]. Researches on users social bookmarking behaviors both in China and abroad were mainly focused on motivations for social bookmarking, the social bookmarking process, results and spam tagging [3]. In terms of motivations for social bookmarking, for example, Sen et al. [4] summarized users five motivations to create tags: Expressing user opinions, organizing information, learning about a topic, finding related information and making a decision on information use. Moreover, a number of researchers investigated the use of social bookmarking in libraries, which chiefly involves the following two aspects. First, some scholars discussed the benefits and problems of integrating social bookmarking into library cataloging systems. DeZelar-Tiedman [5] evaluated the usefulness of available LibraryThing tags for the library catalog records that lacked subject headings. Thomas et al. [6] found that a hybrid catalog combining both the library-supplied subject headings and user tags would provide additional access to resources. Rolla [7] noted the significant differences between Internet users and library catalogers in describing information resources, and concluded that user tags Several libraries used third-party services, such as LibraryThing (LT) for Libraries to import user tags into their OPACs. LibraryThing is an online service to help people catalog their books and create their own collections. It also connects people with the same books, comes up with suggestions for what to read next, and so forth (www.librarything.com/about.). 16

Social bookmarking behaviors of college students: A survey of Wuhan University Library users cannot entirely replace controlled vocabularies. Sen et al. [4] proposed the following categories of tags based on their functions: 1) factual tags that identify the facts about the item, 2) subjective tags that express user opinions regarding the item, and 3) personal tags used for task management or information organization. Lu et al. [8] pointed out that personal tags such as to read, read in 2009 and unread may be useful for the users who created them, but they do not fit into the traditional cataloging and classification systems. In addition, Spiteri [9] demonstrated that folksonomies that are resulted from individuals freely tagging resources available on the Internet could increase the user-friendliness and interactivity of public library catalogs, and also encourage other activities, such as informal online communities of readers and user-driven readers advisory services. Second, other scholars explored the possibilities of integrating applications of social bookmarking sites into the library environment. Mendes et al. [10] presented the implementation of LibraryThing for Libraries (LTFL) in an academic library and analysis of usage of LTFL data and their potential for resource discovery in the catalog. Rethlefsen [11] described how tagging and social bookmarking tools such as del.icio.us could empower library users and library staff in new ways. Kapucu et al. [12] discussed the University of Central Florida (UCF) Libraries Delicious project, which explored the utility of social bookmarking for library instruction, research consultations, and collaborative resource guides. One interesting discovery from UCF librarians was that with social bookmarking service, librarians could learn about users information-seeking behaviors by observing how they chose to classify information. To sum up, libraries are taking advantages of social bookmarking tools, applications, and folksonomies to expand their traditional services. However, few studies have so far discussed the social bookmarking behaviors of library users. In order to help libraries develop and enhance their social bookmarking service, this study investigated users of Wuhan University Library to learn about their social bookmarking motivations and behaviors on the Library website and book sharing sites and their expectations to the Library s service as well. Dan WU et al. 2 Research design 2.1 Background A comparison of social bookmarking service offered by book sharing sites, Chinese public libraries and academic libraries had been made before the survey was Delicious (formerly del.icio.us) is a social bookmarking web service for saving, organizing, and discovering interesting links on the Web. It is available at https://delicious.com/. http://www.chinalibraries.net 17

Chinese Journal of Library and Information Science Vol. 6 No. 3, 2013 implemented. Moreover, we compared tagging data on WUL website and Douban. com. The results indicated that few Chinese libraries are implementing social bookmarking service and limited bookmarking functions are provided. When investigating the user log files of WUL website, we found that users were not so active in adding tags to catalogs. By contrast, Internet users were more active in adding and using tags to describe the same books on Douban.com, resulting in more tags with better quality than those on WUL website. This was probably due to the huge difference in the number of users between a book sharing site and a university library site and the limited bookmarking functions that WUL can provide. Nevertheless, our previous investigation was carried out from the perspective of social bookmarking results rather than from the perspective of library users. More surveys should be conducted to investigate why academic library users were less interested in social bookmarking and what were their expectations to libraries social bookmarking service. Therefore, we planned and conducted another survey from the perspective of library users in hopes of providing insights to the ways that academic libraries can use to explore social bookmarking as a means to enhance library services. 2.2 Methodology The purpose of the survey was to investigate Wuhan University Library (WUL) users social bookmarking motivations and behaviors on book sharing sites (i.e. Douban.com, Guinew.com and Amazon.com ) and WUL OPAC. We designed our questionnaire by referring to Bartley s survey [13] and modified some items according to our prior investigation. A total of 100 pre-test questionnaires were distributed in WUL to the Library users, and some items of the questionnaire were revised according to the pre-test results to make sure items of the questionnaire were easier for respondents to understand and answer. On June 1, 2012, 700 questionnaires were sent out to WUL users and 397 questionnaires were retrieved, in which 357 were considered valid (questionnaires that had incomplete and repeated answers were deleted). Each questionnaire that we distributed consisted of three parts: 1) explanations of the key concepts of the questionnaire, 2) user background, 3) a series of questions to collect information on the respondent s social bookmarking behaviors on book sharing sites and in the Library OPAC, respectively. The questionnaire contained 6 items on a 5-point Likert Douban.com (http://www.douban.com/) is one of the most famous book, music and movie recommendation communities in China. Guinew.com (http://www.guinew.com/) is a book recommendation website in China. http://www.amazon.com/ http://www.lib.whu.edu.cn/web/default.asp 18

Social bookmarking behaviors of college students: A survey of Wuhan University Library users scale, and 5 single-choice questions and 4 multiple-choice questions. The questionnaire is presented in Appendix I. The reliability of the questionnaire was evaluated by calculating Cronbach α. The α value was greater than 0.6 and was considered acceptable. SPSS statistical program was used for data analysis. Dan WU et al. 2.3 Participants The participants of the survey were students from all academic disciplines of Wuhan University. Table 1 shows the demographic details and characteristics of the respondents. Most of them were undergraduate students (78.2%) and spent 2 4 hours a day (71.4%) on the Internet. The gender ratio was 44.5% (male) to 55.5% (female). The average of users knowledge to tagging, book rating and commenting was 3.1, 3.3 and 3.1, respectively, indicating that users had a general understanding of social bookmarking, and there was not much difference between their knowledge about social bookmarking and its features such as rating books and giving comments. Table 1 Demographic details and characteristics of the respondents Category Sub-category Frequency (N=357) Percentage (%) Gender Male 159 44.5 Female 198 55.5 Education Undergraduate students 279 78.2 Master students 74 20.7 Doctoral students 4 1.1 Academic discipline Natural 82 23.0 Engineering 54 15.1 Social 147 41.2 Arts & Humanities 72 20.2 Medicine 2 0.5 Time spent online 1 hour 57 16.0 2 4 hours 255 71.4 5 7 hours 38 10.6 8 hours 7 2.0 3 Results 3.1 Analysis of users social bookmarking behaviors 3.1.1 Users attention to social bookmarking results Tables 2 and 3 illustrated how much attention library users have paid to the social bookmarking results on book sharing sites and in the OPAC of WUL, respectively. As shown in Table 2, users were more interested in bibliographical information, book comments, ratings and recommendations on book sharing sites, but less http://www.chinalibraries.net 19

Chinese Journal of Library and Information Science Vol. 6 No. 3, 2013 interested in tags assigned by other Internet users, or the teams or friends who had the same interests of reading as theirs, and book reading forums, indicating that they did not intend to develop social connections in using the social bookmarking service. Table 3 revealed that library users paid more attention to general bibliographical information and books physical locations in the OPAC, and book summaries also drew much of their attention. No matter on book sharing sites or in the OPAC, book comments drew the most attention, followed by book ratings and tags. Users paid more attention to book comments, ratings and tags on book sharing sites than in the library OPAC, but their attention to bibliographical information on book sharing sites was not as much as that on the Library website. We used t-test to analyze whether there were significant differences between users attention to the items on the book sharing sites and the Library website. The results indicated that p-values for F-statistics of comments and ratings were both greater than 0.05, so they had equal variances. However, p-values for F-statistics of bibliographical information and tags were both less than 0.05, meaning that their variances were different. The p-values for T-statistics of tags, bibliographic information, comments and ratings were all less than 0.05, indicating there was a significant difference in users attention to the four items on book sharing sites and in the library OPAC. Table 2 Users attention to items on book sharing sites Bibliographical information Comments Ratings Recommendations Tags Friends, teams and forums Mean value 3.8011 3.7143 3.4818 3.2101 2.7675 2.5714 Standard deviation 1.27957 1.12287 1.20058 1.14564 1.13388 1.15806 Table 3 Users attention to items in OPAC Collection location Bibliographical information Book summary Comments on Douban.com Comments Ratings Tags Mean value 4.29 4.06 2.99 2.12 2.04 1.97 1.78 Standard deviation 1.924 1.231 1.353 1.249 1.204 1.172 1.022 3.1.2 Users social bookmarking behaviors on book sharing sites Wuhan University Library (WUL) provided social bookmarking service, allowing users to tag, comment on or rate books on the Library website starting from August, 2009. The tags, comments and book ratings added to the Library OPAC are available to all library users. However, according to the system log files of the Library, there were only 536 students who were found to have added tags, given comments or rated books, indicating social bookmarking was not popular among WUL users. 20

Social bookmarking behaviors of college students: A survey of Wuhan University Library users Due to the limited number of questionnaires, it is hard to describe users social bookmarking behaviors in the Library OPAC by investigating a sample of 357 Library users, and therefore we only investigated users social bookmarking behaviors on book sharing sites. The results were summarized in Table 4. We found that it was more common for library users to use tags than assign tags on book sharing sites. They made use of existing tags for purposes such as browsing and retrieving tags that they were interested. When assigning tags, they would tend to rate books more often than comment on books, add tags or respond to others comments. In addition, library users rarely organized their tags to their personal homepages. Table 4 Social bookmarking behaviors on book sharing sites Dan WU et al. Browsing tags Retrieving tags Giving ratings Adding comments Adding bookmarks Responding Organizing to comments tags Mean value 2.9608 2.5154 2.3277 2.1541 2.1148 1.9160 1.6639 Standard deviation 1.31056 1.27988 1.33939 1.12246 1.22508 1.02699 0.89578 3.2 Motivations for social bookmarking on book sharing sites 3.2.1 Motivations for social bookmarking The survey found that 61 out of 357 participants never added any tags, comments or book ratings. Figure 1 displays social bookmarking reasons selected by participants. The majority of users added tags with specific needs in mind. For example, they reminded themselves of the books that they were interested or organized their collections. On the other hand, a few users (33.56%) assigned tags because the system prompted them to do so. In addition, the results show that social factors were not the main tagging incentives, as only 27.8% of the participants identified finding friends, interest teams or forums as a reason for social bookmarking. Proportion (%) 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 20.68 27.80 33.56 46.78 48.81 49.49 56.95 a b c d e f g Motivation for social bookmarking Fig. 1 Reasons for social bookmarking on book sharing sites. Note: a, Helping others find books; b, finding friends, interest teams or forums; c, system prompt; d, collection management; e, recommending books for oneself; f, describing topic areas of the resources; g, book recommendation and evaluation. http://www.chinalibraries.net 21

Chinese Journal of Library and Information Science Vol. 6 No. 3, 2013 3.2.2 Obstacles preventing users social bookmarking on book sharing sites Participants were asked to explain why they would not assign tags on book sharing sites. Their reasons were summarized in Fig. 2. Some of the users (33.05%) complained that it was troublesome to add tags because they needed to register an account before tagging and they were not used to this. Therefore, the difficulties to use the social bookmarking system would inhibit users from tagging on book sharing sites. Most of the participants (74.51%) mentioned the lack of interest or knowledge of social bookmarking service as a major reason why they did not use social bookmarking service offered by the book sharing sites. Proportion (%) 45 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 36.69 37.82 15.97 18.77 a b c d e f g Reasons Fig. 2 The obstacles preventing users social bookmarking on book sharing sites. Note: a, Seldom reading; b, no use; c, having no time; d, inaccuracy of self-added tags; e, difficulties in using the social bookmarking system; f, having no ideas of social bookmarking; g, having no interest. 3.3 Reasons for insufficient social bookmarking in Library OPAC Data from the system log files of WUL shows that merely 536 students added tags, gave comments or rated books in the Library OPAC. Therefore, we asked participants why they did not click the tags available in the Library OPAC or did not add tags to the Library s collections. 3.3.1 Reasons for insufficient tag use in Library OPAC Figure 3 indicates the reasons why users did not notice the tags available in the Library OPAC. The two major reasons were that users only used the OPAC to check physical locations of the books in which they were interested and they even knew nothing about this service offered by the Library. In addition, some users mentioned other reasons. For instance, it is of no use because I can decide whether or not the information resource is useful to me all by myself and I have no idea of this service, and I prefer to use tags on Douban.com, 22

Social bookmarking behaviors of college students: A survey of Wuhan University Library users so the tags provided by our library will only be reference to me. But I agree that our library should improve its social bookmarking service. Dan WU et al. Proportion (%) 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 68.07 51.54 12.32 13.73 17.37 18.49 a b c d e f Reasons Fig. 3 The obstacles preventing users tag use in Library OPAC. Note: a, Doubt about the authority of the tagging results in the Library OPAC; b, having no time to pay attention to the service; c, having no interest in the service; d, never trying to retrieve interested books in library OPAC; e, having no idea of the service; f, visiting the OPAC only for checking physical locations of books. 3.3.2 Obstacles preventing users social bookmarking in Library OPAC Library users stated their reasons why they did not add tags in the Library OPAC, which were illustrated in Fig. 4. The major reasons were having no idea of the Library s social bookmarking service (55.74%) and visiting the Library OPAC just to check physical locations of the books (40.06%). Hence, the lack of knowledge of social bookmarking service and the OPAC functions prevented users from assigning tags in the Library OPAC. Proportion (%) 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 6.44 10.08 14.01 15.69 19.89 22.13 25.77 a b c d e f g h i Reasons Fig. 4 The obstacles preventing users social bookmarking in Library OPAC. Note: a, Seldom reading; b, no use to others; c, insufficient functions of the social bookmarking service provided by the Library; d, having no time for using the service; e, never retrieving interested books in Library OPAC; f, doubt about the quality of tags a user assigned; g, having no interest in the service; h, visiting OPAC only for checking physical locations of books; i, having no idea of the service. 40.06 55.74 3.4 Users expectations to social bookmarking service of the Library Users expectations to the social bookmarking service provided by the Library were analyzed in Table 5, which were calculated on a scale ranging from 1 (not needed http://www.chinalibraries.net 23

Chinese Journal of Library and Information Science Vol. 6 No. 3, 2013 at all) to 5 (strongly needed). Table 5 indicated that users would use the Library s social bookmarking service for various reasons. It is interesting to find that users had the least expectations to the publicity and lectures for social bookmarking service provided by the Library. The low expectation was probably due to the users unfamiliarity with the social bookmarking service. Table 5 Users expectations to social bookmarking service of the Library Organizing tags Retrieving tags Book recommendation Friends, teams or forums Responding to comments Adding ratings Publicity and lectures Mean value 3.4622 3.7983 3.8235 3.4006 3.3333 3.4146 3.2241 Standard deviation 1.23245 1.09066 1.12914 1.12893 1.17240 1.23462 1.22941 4 Suggestions to the implementation of libraries social bookmarking service 4.1 Enhancing publicity and emphasizing practicability of social bookmarking functions In the process of examining the reasons why users did not add tags on book sharing sites or in the Library OPAC, we noted that a considerable number of participants in this study considered the tags that they assigned inaccurate and therefore they would not tag, comment on or rate books. This indicates that library users have shown insufficient understanding of social bookmarking and also highlights the need for a heightened library publicity drive in publicizing and promoting the library s social bookmarking service. As a part of Web2.0 service, the social bookmarking service is user-centered. It allows users to tag books based on their personal understanding so that more users, including the taggers themselves, can benefit from using tags. The tags assigned by a user may not necessarily describe the book content accurately, but this does not matter much to tag users. Moreover, we found another important reason why users did not add or use the tags was a lack of interest in social bookmarking. This shows that there is a general lack of awareness of what benefits users can gain from using the social bookmarking service. Therefore, some incentive measures such as point awarding can be adopted to help arouse library readers interest and promote the use of the social bookmarking service. In addition, the majority of users did not have the patience to study what social bookmarking functions they can make use of and how to use the functions, despite the fact that using the social bookmarking service is not so complicated at all. Hence, an emphasis should be put on the practicability of the social bookmarking system in publicizing the Library s service. 24

Social bookmarking behaviors of college students: A survey of Wuhan University Library users 4.2 Improving social bookmarking functions and the ease of use of the functions Dan WU et al. To attract more users, libraries should improve social bookmarking functions, making the system easy to use. For instance, by integrating the users tags into his/her my library, some functions, such as classification and retrieval of personal collections, along with the retrieval of tags and recommended books, can be achieved. The more social bookmarking functions, the more use of the social bookmarking service. In addition, the increasing use of social bookmarking service can also help improve the accuracy of social bookmarking so that the right books can be recommended to the right readers. Furthermore, considering that libraries may not have sufficient financial and technical capacity, the social bookmarking service can be implemented in phases and in accordance with users needs. For example, our survey shows that, WUL users paid little attention to finding friends, teams and forums which were related to their interest of reading via the social bookmarking service and they had a low expectation to the Library s such service. Therefore, the Library may put a priority on the publicity of the features of social bookmarking systems in which users are more interested when implementing its social bookmarking service. References 1 Social bookmarking. Retrieved on December 1, 2013, from http://www.qub.ac.uk/ directorates/academicstudentaffairs/centreforeducationaldevelopment/e-learning/ SocialBookmarking/. 2 Zauder, K., Lazic, J.L., & Zorica, M.B. Collaborative tagging supported knowledge discovery. In Luzar-Stiffler, V., & Dobric, V.H. (Eds.), Proceedings of the ITI 29 th International Conference on Information Technology Interfaces. New York: IEEE Press, 2007: 437 442. Retrieved on December 1, 2013, from http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=4 283810&tag=1. DOI: 10.1109/ITI.2007.4283810. 3 Yang, Q.Y., Pei, L., & Wu, K.W. Review on the tagging behavior of social tagging system abroad. Journal of Intelligence (in Chinese), 2009, 28(11): 186 188. Retrieved on December 1, 2013, from http://d.wanfangdata.com.cn/periodical_qbzz200911042.aspx. DOI: 10.3969/ j.issn.1002-1965.2009.11.042. 4 Sen, S., Lam, S.K., & Rashid, A.M., et al. Tagging, communities, vocabulary, evolution. In Proceedings of the 20 th Anniversary Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work. New York: ACM, 2006: 181 190. Retrieved on December 1, 2013, from http://dl.acm.org/ citation.cfm?id=1180904. DOI: 10.1145/1180875.1180904. 5 DeZelar-Tiedman, C. Exploring user-contributed metadata s potential to enhance access to literary works. Library Resources & Technical Services, 2011, 55(4): 221 233. Retrieved on December 1, 2013, from http://alcts.metapress.com/content/r481q05568087v23/. DOI: 10.5860/lrts.55n4.221. http://www.chinalibraries.net 25

Chinese Journal of Library and Information Science Vol. 6 No. 3, 2013 6 Thomas, M., Caudle, D.M., & Schmitz, C.M. To tag or not to tag? Library Hi Tech, 2009, 27(3): 411 434. Retrieved on December 1, 2013, from http://www.emeraldinsight.com/ journals.htm?articleid=1811863. DOI: 10.1108/07378830910988540. 7 Rolla, P.J. User tags versus subject heading: Can user-supplied data improve subject access to library collections? Library Resources & Technical Services, 2009, 53(3): 174 184. Retrieved on December 1, 2013, from http://alcts.metapress.com/content/j7181q517428312u/. DOI: 10.5860/lrts.53n3.174. 8 Lu, C.M., Park, J.R., & Hu, X.H. User tags versus expert-assigned subject terms: A comparison of LibraryThing tags and Library of Congress Subject Headings. Journal of Information Science, 2010, 36(6): 763 779. Retrieved on December 1, 2013, from http://dl.acm.org/ citation.cfm?id=1899351. DOI: 10.1177/0165551510386173. 9 Spiteri, L.F. The structure and form of folksonomy tags: The road to the public library catalog. Information Technology and Libraries, 2007, 26(3): 13 25. Retrieved on December 1, 2013, from http://ejournals.bc.edu/ojs/index.php/ital/article/view/3272. DOI: 10.6017/ital.v26i3. 3272. 10 Mendes, L.H., Quiñonez-Skinner, J., & Skaggs, D. Subjecting the catalog to tagging. Library Hi Tech, 2009, 27(1): 30 41. Retrieved on December 1, 2013, from http://www.emeraldin sight.com/journals.htm?articleid=1775781. DOI: 10.1108/07378830910942892. 11 Rethlefsen, M.L. Tags help make libraries Del.icio.us: Social bookmarking and tagging boost participation. Library Journal, 2007, 132(15): 26 28. Retrieved on December 1, 2013, from http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2007/09/ljarchives/tags-help-make-libraries-del-icio-us/#_. 12 Kapucu, A., Hoeppner, A., & Dunlop, D. Getting users to library resources: A delicious alternative. Journal of Electronic Resources Librarianship, 2008, 20(4): 228 242. Retrieved on December 1, 2013, from http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/19411260802554553. DOI: 10.1080/19411260802554553. 13 Bartley, P. Book tagging on LibraryThing: How, why, and what are in the tags? Proceedings of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 2009: 1 22. Vancouver. Retrieved on December 1, 2013, from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ meet.2009.1450460228/abstract;jsessionid=3dd55260afd165b02610833284c69884. f04t02?deniedaccesscustomisedmessage=&userisauthenticated=false. DOI: 10.1002/meet. 2009.1450460228. 26

Social bookmarking behaviors of college students: A survey of Wuhan University Library users Appendix I: Survey questionnaire of users social bookmarking behaviors Dan WU et al. Please read the following concept explanations before you fill in the questionnaire. Tagging: Writing words, phrases, sentences about or giving marks to a book. When clicking one tag, all books related to the tag can be retrieved. Book sharing websites may recommend related tags, books or users to you according to the tags you have added. The following example shows the tags that users add to the book Fortress Besieged on Douban.com. Qian Zhongshu (25,047) Fortress Besieged (16,623) Novel (11,197) Chinese literature (8,288) Classics (7,634), Marriage (4,557) Modern literature (3,167) Rating books: A process that you rate a book, whether in ten levels or five levels. For example, Commenting on books: Making commentaries, giving introduction or writing book reviews, etc. Social bookmarking behavior: The behavior that users add tags, give comments or rate books. Section 1 User background 1 Gender: A. Male B. Female 2 Academic disciplines: A. Natural B. Engineering C. Social D. Arts & Humanities E. Medicine 3 Education: A. Undergraduate freshman or sophomore B. Undergraduate junior or senior C. Master student D. Doctoral student E. Faculty 4 Time spent online per day: A. 1 hour B. 2 4 hours C. 5 7 hours D. 8 hours 5 Your familiarity with social bookmarking behaviors (Please select the number according to your opinion. 1=not familiar at all, 2=not familiar, 3=not sure, 4=familiar, 5=very familiar) No. Items 1 2 3 4 5 1 Familiarity with tagging 2 Familiarity with commenting on books 3 Familiarity with book rating Section 2 Social bookmarking behavior on book sharing sites 6 When browsing book information on the Web, how much attention will you pay to the following items? (Please select the number according to your opinion. 1=no attention at all, 2=no attention, 3=not sure, 4=paying attention, 5=paying a lot of attention) http://www.chinalibraries.net 27

Chinese Journal of Library and Information Science Vol. 6 No. 3, 2013 No. Items 1 2 3 4 5 1 General bibliographical information (such as book names, authors, publishing year, etc.) 2 Tags other users have added to the book 3 Comments other users have given to the book 4 Ratings other users added to the book 5 Related book recommendations 6 Groups, forums, friends, etc. that have the same reading interest as yours 7 The frequency you use the following book sharing sites: (Please select the number according to your opinion. 1=not using at all, 2=not using, 3=not sure, 4=using, 5=using a lot) No. Types of the websites 1 2 3 4 5 1 Social bookmarking sites (e.g. Douban.com) 2 Online reading sites (e.g. Guinew.com) 3 Online book stores (e.g. Amazon.com) 8 Your usage of social bookmarking functions (i.e. tagging, commenting, or rating) (1=not using at all, 2=not using, 3=not sure, 4=using, 5=using a lot) No. Items 1 2 3 4 5 1 Just adding tags only 2 Just browsing the book tags in order to have clear understanding of the book in details 3 Retrieving the tags, or clicking tags to see all the related books 4 Organizing the added tags on the personal homepage 4 Giving comments 5 Responding to comments 6 Adding ratings 9 The reasons why you add tags, comments or ratings to the book resources (You can choose more than one option) A. Because the social bookmarking sites prompt me to add tags, make comments or give ratings. B. To describe the topic areas of the resources and express personal ideas. C. To better organize personal books, and moreover, book collections can be easily found by using tags. D. To remind me of the books recommended by the social bookmarking websites. E. To help social bookmarking websites recommend books or find the friends, groups related to my reading interest, and communicate with them. 28

Social bookmarking behaviors of college students: A survey of Wuhan University Library users F. To recommend books, or rate books, give other users information for their reference. G. To help other users retrieve books more easily. H. Others (Please write down) Dan WU et al. 10 The obstacles preventing social bookmarking on book sharing sites (You can choose more than one option) A. Unfamiliarity with social bookmarking service. B. Having no interest in the service. C. It is not useful to my study. D. Having no time. E. It is complicated, and hard to use. F. Others (Please write down) Section 3 Social bookmarking behavior in Wuhan University Library OPAC 11 Do you know that Wuhan University Library provides social bookmarking service that you can tag, rate and comment on books? A. Yes B. No 12 Among the books retrieval results on Wuhan University Library s site, how frequently will you click the following items? (1=never, 2=seldom, 3=not sure, 4=often, 5=very often) No. Services 1 2 3 4 5 1 Tags assigned by other users 2 Comments made by other users 3 Ratings given by other users 3 Douban s comments linked to the bibliographical record 4 Book summaries 5 Books physical locations, e.g. call number 6 General bibliographical information (book name, author, publishing year, etc.) 13 The reasons why you do not care about, or seldom click the tags, comments, ratings in Wuhan University Library s OPAC or on Douban.com (You can choose more than one option) A. Having no idea of this library service. B. Not trying to retrieve the needed book information on the Library site. C. Just using OPAC to keep track of books physical locations. D. Tags, comments or ratings in the Library s OPAC are not considered a credible or authoritative source. E. Having no interest in social bookmarking service. F. Having no time to pay attention to social bookmarking service. G. Others (Please write down) http://www.chinalibraries.net 29

Chinese Journal of Library and Information Science Vol. 6 No. 3, 2013 14 What prevents you from tagging, commenting on, or rating books in Wuhan University Library s OPAC? (You can choose more than one option) A. Having no idea of tagging. B. Having no interest in tagging. C. Not searching for the interested books on the Library site. D. Visiting the Library site just for keeping track of books physical locations. E. Tags, comments, ratings added by myself are not useful to others. F. Social bookmarking functions provided by the Library is insufficient, and useless for personal information organization or book recommendations, etc. G. Having no time to add tags, comments or ratings. H. Others (Please write down) 15 Do you think it is necessary for Wuhan University Library to provide following services? (1=not at all, 2=not, 3=not sure, 4=yes, 5=yes indeed) No. Items 1 2 3 4 5 1 Library users can add tags to books, and organize them to personal homepage on Library site, and manage personal collections. 2 Library users can retrieve and browse tags. By clicking tags, all books containing the tags can be retrieved. 3 Library recommends books to users according to the topics of books that they often read or based on their social bookmarking behaviors. 4 Library can help users find friends, groups or forums that are related to users reading interests. 5 Library users can respond to others comments, or express personal opinions. 6 Library users can give ratings to books. 7 Giving lectures or launching publicity campaigns to promote the social bookmarking service. 30

Chinese Journal of Library and Information Science Vol. 6 No. 3, 2013 News The 2014 annual meeting of Global Research Council will be held in Beijing The Annual Meeting of Global Research Council 2014 will take place in Beijing hosted by the (CAS) and the Natural and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). The 2 nd Annual Global Meeting of the Global Research Council (GRC) has ended in Berlin on 29 May 2013. Over three days, the heads of about 70 science and research councils around the world as well as high-ranking guests from science and research, science administration and research policy attended the meeting. The topics of discussion and endorsement were an Action Plan towards Open Access, a high-level Statement of Principles for Research Integrity as well as new statutes for the GRC. The outcomes of the meeting s discussions as well as the endorsed documents were presented at a press conference on 29 May 2013 in the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften in Berlin. DFG-President Professor Peter Strohschneider stressed the relevance of Open Access to publications as a main paradigm of scientific communication in the following years. The participants agreed that sharing research publications openly is a means to increase the quality of research communication and thus of research itself. The endorsed Action Plan includes activities by which GRC member organisations can foster the open exchange of research results with a high degree of flexibility. Therefore the plan specifies three basic principles: Encouragement, awareness rising, and support for researchers that wish to provide their results in Open Access. The implementation requires engaging a number of stakeholders, for instance, scientists and scholars themselves, universities, science organisations, libraries, and publishers. The endorsed Principles for Research Integrity point out that researchers and institutions themselves remain ultimately responsible for undertaking research with integrity on the one hand. On the other hand, research funding agencies have an obligation to ensure that supported research corresponds to the highest standards possible, as CNPq-President Professor Glaucius Oliva stated. Hosted jointly by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the National Council of Technological and Scientific Development (CNPq) of Brazil, the 2 nd Annual Global Meeting was the largest of its kind so far and represented some 80 percent of the world s public, non-ministerial research potential. (Available at http://www.globalresearchcouncil.org/meetings/2013-meeting) CJLIS Vol. 6 No. 3, 2013 pp 91 91 http://www.chinalibraries.net 91

Chinese Journal of Library and Information Science Vol. 6 No. 3, 2013 Subscription Chinese Journal of Library and Information Science (CJLIS, Chinese Title: 中国文献情报 ) ISSN 1674-3393, CN 11570/G2; Price: $US 199/Volume Chinese Journal of Library and Information Science (CJLIS) is the fi rst and only Englishlanguage academic journal in the field of Library and Information Science (LIS) that has been published in Mainland China so far. It aims to establish a platform for students, researchers and professionals in LIS and archive science to engage in intellectual dialogs and to share best professional practices of their experience. CJLIS adopts a double-blind peer-review process for each published article. The Editorial Board of CJLIS is composed of well-known scholars both from national and international LIS fields. The main aim of CJLIS is to serve librarians, information professionals, researchers and practitioners in the LIS field for their various purposes and keep them well informed of the latest development of LIS fi eld both in China and the world. CJLIS mainly publishes original research articles, including research papers, library practice papers, progress reports, research reviews and perspectives. For subscription, you can use the following channels: 1) Via EBSCO International, Inc (USA) 2) To order at any post offi ce inside China, with a distribution code 82-563. 3) To contact with the Editorial Offi ce Address: No.33 Beisihuan Xilu, Zhongguancun, Haidian District, Beijing 100190, P.R. China Tel: 86-10-82624454 or 86-10-82626611 ext. 6628 Fax: 86-10-82624454 Email: chinalibraries@mail.las.ac.cn Website: http://www.chinalibraries.net CJLIS Vol. 6 No. 3, 2013 pp 92 92 http://www.chinalibraries.net 92 4) Via Beijing China Science Journal Publishing Co., Ltd. Address: Room 301, Building B, Desheng International Center, No. 83 Deshengmenwai Street, Beijing 100088, P.R. China Tel: 86-10-59790736 ext. 8028 Fax: 86-10-59790736 ext. 8092 E-mail: sunzhipeng@mail.sciencep.com