Tech Tips: Diigo: A Super-Powered Bookmarking Tool

If you are finding that your bookmarks are outgrowing your browser folders, then you might want to give Diigo a try. It is a bookmarking tool that allows you to save websites, label them with multiple tags, add descriptions, and upload thumbnail images. The search features at Diigo are extremely powerful, so if you find yourself doing a lot of Internet research, I highly recommend you give it a try. I can't imagine doing without it! You may have already run into my Diigo bookmarks already because I often share links to my Diigo bookmarks; I have all the Freebookapalooza books bookmarked for example, along with the Growth Mindset Cats, and much more. 

Here's how to set up your own Diigo account:

1. Get started. Go to Diigo.com and create an account. I have an educator account (and if you are a future educator, I recommend you do the same: Diigo for Educators), but the free account is a great way to get started. You will see a few Diigo bookmarks in your new account with some tips; you can click on the three-dots menu to the right of each of those starter bookmarks to delete them.

2. Add a bookmark. Open a new browser tab and find a site you want to bookmark; for example, you might want to bookmark some books from the Freebookapalooza. Go to a specific book page, so that the URL appears in your browser bar. Copy that URL address. Then, go to your Diigo page and click the blue plus in the upper right-hand corner, then select the blue bookmark webpage option. Paste in the URL.

3. Annotate. Diigo will grab the title of the webpage from the webpage itself; you can change that if you want. Now you can add a description to the bookmark (that's optional), and you will also be prompted to add tags. Make sure you use one-word tags only (use CamelCase if you want multiword tags), and then space between multiple tags. Click Add when you are done.

4. Diigo/Web addresses. You will now see the bookmark, and it has two ways you can access the contents: you can click on the title and Diigo will grab the contents of the site and cache it locally. You can also click on the web address (in smaller type below the title) to actually go to the webpage in a separate browser tab. 

5. Sort by tag. Meanwhile, you can click on any of the tags you added and see all the bookmarks that have that same tag. This is also equivalent to searching on the tag; notice that when you search on a tag you preface it with a hashtag sign, indicating that a tag search, as opposed to a text search.

Import browser bookmarks. You can also import all your existing browser bookmarks if you want. To do that, you need to first export the bookmarks in HTML format (follow the instructions in your browser for doing that; here's how for Chrome, and Firefox), and then Import the HTML file into Diigo.

To finish up this tip, either bookmark a few more sites manually and/or import your browser bookmarks. Then, write up a blog post about your experience so far: have you used a bookmarking tool like Diigo before? do you have a research project that you want to use Diigo for? do you have any questions about where to go next? Please ask: I am a big Diigo fan, and I'll try to help if I can. For the post title, use "Tech Tip: Getting Started with Diigo" and use "Tech Tip" as the label on the post. After you've posted, you can do the Declaration!

You can find more information at Diigo Help. The most efficient way to use Diigo is by adding a browser extension so that you can bookmark with a single click; that's the tip I would recommend doing next: Diigo Browser Extensions.