Personal online collection sharing, Useful tools for Plebisite?

Just wondering if these tools (or something modeled on them) would be useful for the Plebisite. The idea is that people can store, access, and share collections of links and/or electronic documents over the Web.

http://www.citeulike.org/about

And a more in-depth article that is more theoretical. Here's an excerpt:

and a link to the whole article: http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue40/chudnov/

C.

I've been thinking some more about just how important a feature like this might be. Imaging a researcher in Australia who has amassed a large collection of links, electronic citations, and web-based documents. Imagine another researcher (or student, or whatever) deciding to do some work in the same area or field. Wouldn't it be great for the two researchers to share and contribute to the same web-based reference list/personal online document collection?

In broader terms, imagine having a massive shared database of citations and articles that the researchers themselves have found useful, and making it searchable by keyword or subject heading so that others could query the database and find links and articles that have already been used and "approved" by others working on similar topics.

In a sense, it would be more than simply sharing articles or links. It would amount to sharing (as suggested in the article) your research process. I think it would be helpful in reducing redundant research. It would also allow isolated researchers to function as a sort of informal research community.

I think this idea has real potential. Anyone have any other thoughts?

C.

I really love where you are taking this. Personally I envision a whole suite of features in the plebisite software/agiraffe system, that would fully take advantage of the index of schools, departments, faculties, centres and institutes. It's time to take existing collaboration between regional facilities to the next level.

A big hurdle will be language I think, for instance if there is a research team at the u of a co-ordinating with someone technical institute in Germany. The solution may present itself through the giraffe network, in that hopfully both the department of Germanic Studies at the U of A, and the English department in Berlin could be actively involved, in translating documents, project updates and other materials. It's a win-win situation.