Week 4: The role of curation tools in libraries

This week, I’ve learned about how to use some curation tools for organize certain information. I think these tools are useful for librarians, because they can be used to form items in the library website or in other channels for certain patrons to look up on some specific topics.

The role of a curator is to

“Collect, filter, analyze and pass on or deliver select items from the wealth of electronic content that is produced every day”.

People can get high quality and proper chunks of information through these materials. Information overload is already the information which is overloaded in this era. People need to get only the right information for their lives. The Curation tools are just like filters when using by an experienced person. For example, the Storify content shown in the unit site in QUT Blackboard site, is the relevant information displayed in a single place for specific readers. So the readers only explore all the essential information organized by the professionals. In this way, good effects for education which is stated by Sykes can be achieved. Same as the talk by the journalist, Scoble, in YouTube, online curation is important to let people get proper information which is more valuable than the rest of the information.

In a library, the needs for patrons can be met by supply them these certain curated items. It will save them huge amount of time which would otherwise be wasted on the web for nothing. As an information professional, the ability to be a curator is a basic skill. For a librarian, to organize online information is one of the normal daily tasks.  If librarians can use the curation tools to enhance services, it will create meaningful user experience for the relevant clients.

The tool, Storify seems to be an easy tool to curate information on the web by librarians. When I tried to organize the information by using it for the first time yesterday, I found it’s easy than I thought. But I still have to figure out some functions. I also like the tool, Pinterest, used by Yarra Plenty Regional Library. It is a nice curation tool as well.

In conclusion, I think the role of curation tools could be regarded as important service tools for library. Library online service items can be delivered to patrons by using the curation tools, such as Storify.