Thing 8: Curation Tools

Tools to appeal to Visual Learners.

These are three very interesting, and in the case of Flipboard and Pinterest, very visually striking tools.

Pinterest, I had used a little bit but had always dismissed it as little more than a glorified picture scrapbook.  Pretty to look at if you wanted ideas on how to organise your closet or get a steer on what colour jacket would go with what dress.  Delving a little deeper into what it has to offer though, I think I might have been a little harsh.  There are far more useful pins in it than I had realised and it could be a really useful way to engage with students, especially those who find it easier to learn in a visual way.

Of course, it is also a great resource when looking for new and interesting ways of displaying and promoting library material.

Flipboard is a tool that I had looked at a few years ago and enjoyed using it for a while but just gradually got out of the habit of looking at it frequently.

It is a lovely, visually appealing tool to look at with slick typography and glossy photographs.  There are topics for everyone to get aggregated news on. If finding “news” items on Kate Middleton is your wish, well you can. Of course, it follows that quantity of sources does not equal quality but I suppose it all depends on what you are looking for.

It is great way of following topics or particular news sources.  Building up your own magazine of stories that you can read later when you have the time is so easy.

I also like the Daily Edition feature where you can check out the top news stories of the day.

Of course, it can be very easy to become overwhelmed by the sheer amount of articles that are being aggregated for you but I suppose you either have to narrowly focus your topics or become adept at being able to filter the useful news items from the not so useful.

When I was checking it out, I also felt that the news stories were mainly coming from American publications and that could leave a very one sided take on what is going on in the world.

I definitely think that this could be a really useful tool to use with students in information training sessions.  It’s a great way for them to start thinking about how to pull sources together when working on assignments in certain areas.  The immediacy of the information could be really useful to them.

 The concept behind Storify is really interesting and I look forward to investigating how it works and where it could potentially be useful in a library setting.