Furl

From LIS 460 Summer 2007

Furl.net

Furl.net [1] is social bookmarking site. On the surface, it is simiar to del.icio.us, but upon further investigation, Furl offers much more. An overview of the key features include:

Saving

- the ability to save a web page in its current state. This allows the user to go back and look at the page in it's original state or refresh to the most current state. When saving documents into Furl, users assign a "topic" to the saved sites and "keywords" (called tags in delicious). This will assist in finding the information at a later date and also in organizing information. The sites are saved into the users file. This is where Furl has the biggest advantage over del.ici.ous in the long run. It may be easier to open, tag and write a quick note in del.ici.ous, but if the user takes the time to properly assign a topic and key words to the site in Furl, it can be retrieved much more easily through Furl than del.ici.ous.

- Users comments and 1-5 Rating system incorporated into the page. del.ici.ous doe not offer this.

Privacy

-Privacy options include by topic, by item or everything by default. This would be especially important in a school setting. Not available in del.ici.ous.

Search

-Furl provides an extensive ability to search all saved pages through a personal full text index. Users can also search other members publicly saved URLs by topic or keyword, and search the web through a product they have called LookSmart. With del.ici.ous, the user seaches through tags sorted alphabetically or by cloud,which is time consuming and not always very efficient. There is the ability to create networks and share postings with each other, but not a way to organize them according to what the user may be looking for.

Copyright Policy with Furl

If a user chooses to access a document and it is copyright protected (say an article that has been retrieved from a database), the new user will be brought to the publishers site, and further access is prohibited.

New Knowledge

Based on the links that the user is saving, Furl will reccommend other links, and let the user know what others are saving like this. Almost like a readers advisory service for reference!

Furl.net in the School Library

Teachers/SLMS use of Furl: Maintaining a set of web sites for student use that they have created with the SLMS for a unit that they are coteaching on Africa.

Student Use of Furl: Research project on Budhism for English class. Furl used to maintain list of sites found, database entries,ready made citations at end.

Anatomy and Physiology Class: Stem Cell Research Debate. Group Project, 2 groups, need to debate each side of the issue. Use Furl to gather data, RSS feed, use Looksmart feature, search other public urls in Furl, post sites.

A major selling point to Furl is the privacy option, which gives control to the school as to whether information will leave the building.