Beyond bookmarks...

How do you save web pages and other online information? Still using the Bookmarks or Favorites feature of your browser? That saves the link, but only on the computer you’re using at the time. You won’t have access to your browser-based bookmarks from other computers or from your smartphone.

Moreover, with the limited sorting and categorizing capabilities of browser-based bookmarks, you might have trouble finding them later on your computer.

Nowadays it’s easy to store bookmarks and web pages “in the cloud” so that you can access them from any device connected to the Internet. You have hundreds of options. Here are a few, based on how you might use your bookmarks:


If you just want quick access to your favorite websites and links…

A simple online bookmarking service is all you need. Organize your links by categories, and/or label them with “tags” (keywords or key phrases) that will help you find them later. For example, suppose you have a collection of links to your favorite shopping sites, under the category Shopping. Each link saved under Shopping can be tagged with one or more keywords such as books, pet supplies, cameras, etc.

Later, when you search for the tag, camera, you’ll pull up all the links you tagged with that word – not just from the Shopping category, but across all categories. Thus, if you also had a Photography category of links, some of which were tagged with camera, these would also show up.

Simple online bookmark managers include: Google bookmarks, Yahoo bookmarks, Delicious.com (no categories, tags only.)


If you want to collect content for reviewing later on…

Use bookmarking services with extra features such as highlighting and annotating. You can highlight parts of web pages, and they will still be highlighted when you return to the page (assuming that you are logged into the bookmarking site.) You can also attach virtual sticky notes with comments.

Other features include saving snippets or snapshots of web pages, so that you can view them in your collection even if the original sources are taken off line.

My favorite bookmarking site is diigo.com. They have a free and premium version. In addition to the above features, the premium version ($40/year) gives you the option of saving only the text of your bookmarked pages (without clutter or ads) and full-text search of your bookmarked pages.


If you want to work with your collected content…

When doing research for a writing project, you need more than simply access to content. You also need to organize the content, extract what you need for your article or book, and make your own notes and annotations along the way. Here are two online tools:

Webnotes.net allows you to highlight text on web pages, annotate, and search for text within your annotations. In your Webnotes account you can set up folders for each writing project, keeping all related content together. One very useful feature is the ability to display text you’ve highlighted from different web pages (i.e., only the content that’s important to you) all in one interface. The “Pro” version of Webnotes ($35/year) adds features such as saving and annotating PDF pages, generating reports and automatically saving permanent copies of web pages.

Zotero.org is less intuitive to use than Webnotes, but allows you to upload files from your computer into your online account. It also includes a powerful citation manager. With a click of your mouse you can capture the bibliographic information for any web page or document, using any of several citation styles, including APA.


All the tools listed above are free, except where noted. No need to stick to just one – try a few and see which work best for you.