I think that tools like delicious have great potential for use as reference tools in libraries. There are many websites out there that are excellent sources of information, but often times you remember the site, but not the URL. - "Oh yeah dogs, I found this great site on dogs, now what was that URL...?" - If however, every time you found a great site on dogs, you bookmarked it on your library delicious page and tagged it, you could simply go to your tag cloud, click dogs and voila, you have reference material for the customer.
Check out my delicious tag cloud and links to my bookmarks to the right!
As mentioned in the blog for this week, Cockburn libraries currently has a similar tag cloud (courtesy of Librarything) set up in our OPAC so that borrowers can take the pain out of searching for books on particular topic in our collection. This is an excellent addition to our catalogue.
Once again IT's security have blocked something utterly harmless and as such I have been unable to create a widget from my Librarything catalogue. Instead I have embedded the Cockburn Libraries Staff's Currently Reading Widget into my blog, also to the right.
Nice work. And good to hear positive feedback and examples how some of these technologies can work in libraries. I love the idea of the cloud on the library catalogue.
ReplyDeleteGood points on how these technologies can work in the library world. Looks like we can all take inspiration from what Cockburn are doing.
ReplyDeleteI used to use the SLWA tag cloud - but either that's no longer available to the public or it's been moved. I think in order to reduce unnecessary ILL’s traffic we should be trying to find more resources online and it’s impracticable to do this using your browser bookmarks.
ReplyDeleteIf you can't overcome technological barriers to place a widget on your blog what chance do I have??
ReplyDelete