purpose: to have a better understanding of library users’ social bookmarking behaviors, we conducted a survey of college students to examine how much attention they have paid to social bookmarking results, their social bookmarking motivations and behaviors on book sharing sites and in their library’s opac, and their expectations to their library’s social bookmarking service.

design/methodology/approach: a questionnaire survey was conducted to investigate social bookmarking behaviors and motivations of users of wuhan university library (wul) on book sharing sites and in wul’s opac. a total of 700 questionnaires were distributed and 357 valid questionnaires were retrieved. spss was used for data analysis.

findings: the results revealed that there were differences between users’ social bookmarking behaviors on book sharing sites and in the library’s opac. users preferred to use tags than add tags on book sharing sites. the main tagging motivation on book sharing sites was for meeting users’ specific needs such as collection management and book recommendations. as for the library, the lack of publicity and promotion of the social bookmarking service led to insufficient use of the library’s service. due to a lack of knowledge of the social bookmarking service, users did not care about the lectures or publicity campaigns about the library’s social bookmarking service.

research limitations: because social bookmarking was not common among wul users, and the questionnaires could be handed out to a limited number of people, it was hard to describe users’ social bookmarking behaviors in the library’s opac by investigating a sample of 357 library users, and therefore we only investigated users’ social bookmarking behaviors on the book sharing sites.

practical implications: the survey results provide insights into library users’ social bookmarking behaviors and motivations. the study will help academic libraries improve their social bookmarking service.

originality/value: in spite of growing popularity of social bookmarking sites, little has been known about the social bookmarking behaviors of library users. this study investigated college students’ social bookmarking behaviors and motivations, providing suggestions for academic libraries to improve their social bookmarking services.