Search Journal

It occurred to me the other day that the right place for certain bookmarks to reside is not local to the content consumer, but local to the content source itself. Take slashdot for example: I have little or no difficulty remembering that a particular tidbit of information I'm looking for was first encountered on that site, but may have much more difficulty remembering those crucial details that would allow me to pluck it out of the horde. Unless my bookmarks can be sorted by domain, I'm left hunting and pecking through my collection looking for that one desired link.

Searchmarking does help in this regard as the search tool can be programmed to allow one to sort, group, or limit results by domain. Even without such specific functionality, simply including the domain name in the query can produce the desired result. Nonetheless, there are times when it would be most beneficial for particular bookmarks to reside on the site in question instead of in your browser or search index.

Not surprisingly, I'm not the only one to have had this idea. A quick scan of javascript.internet.com turned up a little magic by Pete Thompson, a script that allows a user to save bookmarks to a cookie so that they can be listed on the site's home page (or wherever) next time the user visits. Of course, technically speaking these bookmarks are still local to the browser, but this detail is transparent to the average user.

A more robust solution, albeit one requiring significantly more overhead, is the "personal bookshelf" idea used by several online digital libraries like the ACM-DL. Far more than just a list of quick links, personal bookshelves often support abstracts, reviews, citation information, and some hardcore functionality for managing, updating, and previewing elements of your collection. No doubt overkill for the majority of sites, but personal bookshelves can make all the difference in the world in some cases.

It surprises me that I haven't tripped across this idea in the wild a million times over. Seems I can't go a week without hitting that damned want to make my useless site your home page? alert box.

First of the month, and 52 days since I last rebuilt the index file -- figured it was time. The index file started out as 14,136 KB, and contained 2,185 resources. 150 minutes later the file weighed in at 13,987 KB, now with 2,155 resources. Again, 30 resources removed. Spooky.