Thing 8: Curation Tools

This post is written for the online social media course Rudai: 23

This has been my favourite task so far. Assisting people in answering their questions is the aspect of librarianship I find most rewarding, be it looking up a ready reference question, guiding them to a specific set of resources or conducting an interview to refine their exact area of interest. However in this day of the internet and Google it may not occur to people to use their library and librarian as an information resource. Curation is an important tool for engaging people’s interest in libraries and making them aware of what the library can do for them. By selecting and arrange specific materials according to a certain theme or message, librarians display their ability to recognise and locate materials connected to a certain topic. In addition to facilitating information literacy, such curated visual displays, depending on the issue they explore, could draw in social groups who might not regularly use libraries

The curation tool I chose to focus on is Flipboard, which is a useful way of experimenting with curation. Creating my first “Magazine” was great fun, firstly working out what I wanted the theme of flip book to be, then choosing the different categories and subcategories. I was particularly impressed by this feature of Flipboard as it helped me see connections between topics of which I was previously unaware.

I based my choices around my interest in the different preferences people have for searching for answers to questions. Unsurprisingly I therefore titled my “Magazine” “Answering Questions”. My categories included Librarianship, Information Literacy and Pedagogy as I thought these would be informative about the different advantages and disadvantages of different research methods. The “flipping” feature is extremely user friendly and I enjoyed building up a thematic collection of articles. Here’s a link to my Flipboard page. It’s only in it’s early stages but I definitely see myself using in the future, if only for own educational development.