User preferences in the classification of electronic bookmarks: Implications for a shared system

Using the financial industry as a context, the following study seeks to address the issue of the classification of electronic bookmarks in a multi‐user system by investigating what factors influence how individuals develop categories for bookmarks and how they choose to classify bookmarks within those organizational categories. An experiment was conducted in which a sample of 15 participants was asked to bookmark and to categorize 60 web sites within Internet Browser folders of their own creation. Based on the data collected during this first component of the study, individual, customized questionnaires were composed for each participant. Whereas some of the questions within these surveys focused on particular classificatory decisions regarding specific bookmarks, others looked at how the participant defined, utilized, and structured the category folders that comprised his or her classification system. The results presented in this paper focus on issues investigated in Kwasnik's (Journal of Documentation, 1991, 47, 389–398) study of the factors that inform how individuals organize their personal, paper‐based documents in office environments. Whereas classificatory attributes culled from questionnaire responses nominally resembled those identified by Kwasnik, it was found that a number of these factors assumed distinctive definitions in the electronic environment. The present study suggests that the application of individual instances of classificatory attributes and the distinction between Content and Context Attributes emphasized by Kwasnik play a minimal role in the development of a multi‐user classification system for bookmarks.