Session 7

Create a blog post about your experience and thoughts about using this tool in libraries. Can you see the potential of this tool for research assistance? Or just as an easy way to create bookmarks that can be accessed from anywhere?


My understanding of Delicious is that it is a means of storing, categorizing and sharing selected websites. It can be used for personal or professional reasons. It is created from the ground up, meaning anyone can do it, rather than requiring special tools/formulaes - folksonomy. The sharing is multi-level - I can share my bookmarks with someone else, and they can share theirs with mine, extra people added also share the bookmarks of everyone I have added to my network, with the option to not share particular sites so privacy is protected.

There is much potential for research assistance in this. The main thing to think through would be whether this was the best tool to use, whether a wikki might be better for example. Also - how it would be delivered/accessed, and what, if any, sort of controls might be needed, or not.

Some uses might be: where students are doing particularly big/difficult/complex projects then staff can share with each other and with students the best/most up-to-date sites they find at the time it is most needed. It would be like having a group of librarians helping each student simultaneously - and if academics were able to input as well through the networking capabilities then students would have a very strong support to go to.

Subject guides - ? - thinking here of grouping search guides and help pages for searching strategies for different systems, as a means of accessing other libraries help pages - so if people are having difficulty they could go quickly to other sets of instructions?

ILDesk - I'm sure there is something there but its late and I can't think.

Session 6 - Videos online

Many, many uses where a short film is the chosen/best means of conveying a piece or type of information. The video below is an example of how we could show what it is we do - I can see possible applications at the ILDesk as well. Many people come up and say (nervously) 'this is the first time I have borrowed' so a simple film showing what you need to do when you have found something you want to borrow - or perhaps that is overkill? - it would make the library look friendly and approachable, and would aid for those people who like to check things out before trying.

The question would be - where would you put it - is this a wikki thing?? there are many possibilities ...

We could use shelvers and ILDesk student staff as actors ...

could be lots of fun ....

Library application YouTube/Google

Wikkis

Just had another go through this section to refresh - generally I see the potential for wikkis to lie in their versatility and flexibility in terms of the range of information that can be put on them - the fact that they are very user friendly and accessible (depending on design of the site of course) - information can be internal or external but focussed on the needs of the individual/section/organization that created the site - that overall they provide a good one-stop shop type service, ie a good place to start when looking for just about anything to do with, in our case, library service.

Design would be particularly important, things like colour, layout, graphics, text (size, amount, type, colour) would all need to be carefully selected and arranged to ensure the immediate visual effect wasn't cluttered or looked unprofessional or disorganized - given the range of information provided, and the daily nature of its maintenance it would be easy to get it wrong - on the other hand, there are lots of good examples to learn from.