Web clipping

Most of us today either for fun or for profit live out of the web. For a small price, we have access to online resources like articles, podcasts and videos. If you come across a useful resource by chance, or you have come upon it through hours of searching the Internet, you would definitely want to save it for future reference. This is where web clipping, a feature that does just that, comes in. 

For years we have been familiar with the Favorites or Bookmarking as it is sometimes called, a feature of the web browser that allows us to save the web address. We could return to this saved address any time that you are connected to the Internet and view the resource once again. However, it has a limitation. You need to be connected to go back to the resource. It is useless when you need it for offline work, like when there is no possibility of connecting to the Internet.  

Bookmarking has matured in recent years and we have seen a slew of tools and applications that provide offline access to Interney resources. Primarily  we need bookmarking for the following reasons:  research, share and learn. 

Research

You are doing research on a subject and spend a lot of the time on the Internet looking for the necessary material. You ask: what are the ways in which I could clip the web page including the web address?

There are tools to help you with that but you need to figure out at the outset what kind of research you are doing. There are domains of research and the tools mostly are tailored to them. He we will discuss some of the generic tools that fall somewhere between the needs of a hobbyist and the research scholar. 

There's one more thing to consider when you are looking for a tool for bookmarking. some are free and some as you may have guessed cost a bomb. We will stick to the free tools that have stood the test of time in delivering what they have promised. 

There are tools called browser extensions available for the desktop computer. These tools are also called add-ons or plugins. The tool allows the web page to be copied in a storage provided by the tool. The web page copy also stores the web address of the resource so that it can be used in citations. 

The tools are specific to a browser. That is, if you have more than one browser, then you will need a different plugin for each. Sometimes the same tool may not be available for different browsers and you end up having your notes scattered in different browsers. 

Sent from my iPad