Within a learning/working community tagging appears to be an efficient way to find, save and share valuable information already preserved in easy to use links. For example, our lower elementary teachers could share favorite sites and links by tagging this information into subject area groups. I could see the value in setting up an account of social bookmarking where the various genres of reading could each be tagged and easily located. Of course, within the realm of bookmarking ad tagging, the variety of information that could be useful within a working group could be almost endless.
I perceive the use of tagging advantageous for many reasons. Different forms of information and media can be gathered into one location to share, users would be exposed to new sites that they may have never thought of or discovered on their own and the information could also evolve to include new data. The use of this type of data retrieval system would also save so much time!
The only disadvantage, in my opinion, would be trying to weed out unwanted sites because someone used poor keywords which would cause a user the task of having to sort through unwanted data.
For social bookmarking and tagging to be efficient, the data shared must be readily available to peers and colleagues who are in need of the same information. Groups must communicate where to find the stored information, how to productively add to the data and how to effectively keep the data updated. Users must plan ahead on which bookmarking system to use and how to tag these bookmarks with keywords that fit the needs of the group.
Since users set-up their own accounts on an individual basis, is it possible for a group of workers to set-up one account that is usable and accessible by each member?