Thing 6 - Curation Tools

Thing 6 introduced me to several new tools and I enjoyed experimenting with many of them. Since I am already familiar with Delicious social bookmarking and Pinterest, I focused on some of the other tools - but I did begin following "Cool Tools" through my existing Pinterest account :-)

I was surprised (pleasantly) to learn that although I hadn't realized it, I've already been "curating" resources for years - I just haven't called it that, or used some of the newer online tools to do it. After reading through some of the articles, I found the most helpful ones to be those that gave ideas for how we curate resources for library users.

Flipboard sounded interesting to me, so I created a new account and looked around. It wasn't completely intuitive to me, so I'm starting out with it by following the suggested "In the Fishbowl" board as well as a few others I came across that sounded interesting to me. I'm not sure how much I will use this account, but appreciate the opportunity to explore this resource.

My favorite new resource from Thing 6 is Storify! At first it took me a while to figure it out, but once I created the account and took the "tour", I decided to give it a try with a quick sample "story" consisting of grant opportunities and grant ideas for school libraries. I haven't gone through the resources I curated yet, but my "story" can be viewed at https://storify.com/missbook/grant-project-ideas

I can see myself using Storify more than Flipboard, especially when in the early phase of researching something. I explored both of these sites on my laptop, so I am anxious to check the App Store to see if these have iPhone mobile app options next. Looking forward to Thing 7!