Research Project Calculator

When I first read about this, I found it mildly insane that we need to provide students with a tool to help them organize and plan their research. However, isn't that what information literacy is all about? We need to teach users to find, evaluate, and effectively use information. If all of that is not done on an appropriate time schedule, then we have not yet succeeded. Both academic and public libraries can use this planning tool to assist users. Don't forget to advertise it though!

Ahoy Matey

The PuzzlePirate game was interesting as a puzzle game (I'm a puzzle fanatic!), but I didn't really see any interaction between the pirates. Perhaps I should have tried harder at this, but it didn't seem important to the goal of the game. How does this game relate to the library world? As well develop games for information literacy, perhaps we need to be as involved and detailed as the SecondLife and PuzzlePirate worlds. Users could definitely learn through gaming and it would be more interactive and fun. However, we are still stuck in the TILT model as well as the low budget privately developed game model. Perhaps the Instruction Section of ACRL could work together to get such a well funded game developed for the use of all instruction librarians.

LibraryThing in the Library

LibraryThing is an awesome networking and Readers' Advisory tool. If wikis aren't your Thing and those Readers' Advisory printouts just aren't getting any use, then maybe you should look at linking your library up to LibraryThing.

What do I read next? It's the age-old problem that avid readers have. It's why I've stopped buying books and only check them out from the library or borrow them from friends. It's just too expensive a habit to blow through a book in a day or two (even a week if I'm really slow). But once you've read every Stephen King or Debbie Macomber book available (or just gotten tired of the author), how do you know where to go next?

It's about Tags, Stupid! Set up a LibraryThing account for your library starting with some of your most popular authors/genres. Now start tagging! Add one or several descriptive tags for each book. Tags are much more capable than the controlled vocabulary of your OPAC, but just like a controlled vocabulary, tags are most useful when they are consistent. Read about how to tag several books at once with the same tag to ease your workload.

Check out your cloud. Once you've gotten a good number of books tagged, you'll want to look at your own tag cloud as well as the Tag Mirror. It lets you see how others in the community have tagged books in your collection. You might find some useful tags to add to your collection to help your readers better find what they are looking for.

Overall, LibraryThing is a fabulous site, especially for libraries that want to go 2.0 but are jealously guarding their OPAC from those dreaded tags that might mess up the controlled vocabulary. Create an account for your library and link to it from your homepage to get another step into the 2.0 world.

More Productivity or More Work?

It's hard to tell yet whether online productivity tools like sticky notes, file converters, and Backpack would be more beneficial than the standard method. I think that at first there would be a definite learning curve for all those involved. Any time you change the communication system, expect there to be resisters and hoopladites (those who adopt new 'hoopla' right away).

The best way to decide what an institution should use is to look at what they hope to get done. Don't just grab the first cool app and say, "Let's use this! It looks so cool!" These tools could be used by individuals, departments, individual library branches, or entire library systems. Take a look at the most commonly performed actions and then evaluate what online tool might assist with those actions. Follow the following tips to decide whether to jump in and use a productivity tool:

• Make sure you're actually going to use it. If you aren't going to use a tool often enough to get comfortable with it, you probably aren't going to stick with it.
• Try it out yourself first. If you can't figure it out, odds are the rest of the people in your department won't either.
• Is it the best tool for the job? Make sure that another tool won't do the same job better and cheaper.
• Is it compatible with software or tools that you already use? If you're already using GoogleCalendar for your library schedule, do you want to add a To Do list manager that is separate from Google?
  
• Decide at what level to use the tool. Is this a tool that makes your life easier but is optional for others? Would it enhance communication in the department, branch or system?
  

Social Media

Using Social Media in the library is an interesting concept. One possible way to promote its use in the library is to place a large flatscreen near the library entrance that is connected to a Social Media site and set to refresh every so often or to rotate with other world, local, and library news headlines.

Reference workers should also review a couple sites throughout the day to know what is in the mainstream media as well as in the popular media. Well-informed reference workers will be the best resources to patrons.

Delicious Pages

The social bookmarking site Delicious has received a lot of hype in recent years. Although I have experimented with the site, I have found that it is just not very useful to me. I do not frequently use computers that are not my own so I have no real need to carry my bookmarks with me "wherever I go." I have found that adding Delicious to my browser toolbar clutters my screen and adds a minimal amount of functionality to the browser.

For a static list of websites that a group of people may want to consult, why not create a wiki? The amount of effort that goes into effectively adding a link to Delicious is more time than I want to spend. If I really like the website, I'll just add it in a folder on my bookmarks tab. The folders do all I need them to in terms of organization. I rarely share links to sites I find interesting with my friends - it goes along with not forwarding those chain emails I get. However, a library could choose to create Delicious tags based on their catalog or other terms. Yet, I still think that listing these sites by category or question in wiki format would be more helpful to users. Or, if the sites are mainly news related, perhaps the library homepage should have an editable space for relevant media stories.

Viva La Wiki

Wikis are an interesting method of keeping information in a central place while controlling who can change or comment on it. In the library context, wikis may be most useful for the staff's use or for listing online resources that are not in the catalog for popular reference questions.

The Albany County Public Library Wiki demonstrates the advantages that a wiki can bring to a staff. Staff schedules are posted there weekly, staff brainstorm activities during planning periods, and managers coordinate their duties and tasks there. Wikis present an alternative to using collaborative writing tools like those I mentioned in the previous post. For many of these tasks, it seems wikis are much better suited to the user's needs.

Using wikis to list reviews or suggested book lists may not be as suitable. LibraryThing would better accommodate the ability to review and link like materials together through tags. However, a wiki could be very helpful as an online Reference Desk Resource. The wiki could be accessible not only by library staff but by users as well. It could direct users to reliable online resources for information on the most popular reference questions (similar to FAQs). It could even be updated daily with a "question of the day." One reference librarian could be assigned each day to take a question that they helped a patron answer and add it to the Reference Wiki. New staff and users would both benefit from such an arrangement.