Thing 5: Curation Tools

I have never considered myself a curator until now.  It makes sense that as a librarian, I am collecting information, not just in print materials, and cataloging it into different subject areas.  I have bookmarked many great resources in Google Chrome by hitting the star on the toolbar and saving them into private folders, but I have not considered the value of sharing my digital collections.  Social networking allows us to share all sorts of great information, so why not curate my collections with sharing in mind.  Social bookmarking allows us to expand our knowledge and resources through a variety of bookmarking sites such as Diigo, Delicious and Pinterest.  Assigning tags to our content lets anyone using these sites find resources by the subject(s) tags.  The tags also help us organize and find our own resources.  We also are likely to find other librarians and educational colleagues through this online community, so that's an added bonus.  Lastly, my cloud-based bookmarks can be accessed anywhere, which is pretty handy!

So, I set up an account with Diigo a long time ago, but haven't made much use of it, despite the occasional email with from the Diigo in Education group.  I think I needed to have a few groups that fit my needs, like Teacher-librarians!!!  If Joyce Valenza is posting, it will be very useful!  In addition, I joined the Cool Tools for Schools & Google in Education groups  I also went ahead and added Heather, Buffy and Shannon to people I follow, so I think Diigo will be a good source for me now.  I added the bookmarklet to my toolbar, so I can quickly put useful digital content in to my Diigo library.

Flipboard is not new to me but I love it and use it often on my iPhone, so I added the examples that Polly posted to explore at my leisure.

Pinterest is GREAT and I have used it many times for library displays, storytime lessons and related crafts, library skills lessons, etc.  Here is a collection of pins that I put together to help librarians promote Banned Book Week:  Banned Book Week Pinterest Board 

Since I needed to explore a new curation tool, I have created an account with Symbaloo and currently have a board that will be added to my school library website for digital resources.  I believe the graphic symbols on a webpage will be much more inviting and user-friendly to my students.  It is not easy to get them to bypass a quick Google search for information, but if they can access all the best sites on a single page, it is more likely to be used.  They will also see other resources that will help them find related subjects of interest.  The link to my new Symbaloo Webmix is:  SWW Library Resources

Thanks for the great curation resources and the inspiration to revisit forgotten curation tools.