Subject Guides 2.0

I have been busy wrapping up my course work for SLIS 761 at the University of South Carolina. And though it may seem I haven’t been writing any blog posts of late, I have had to write 5 for this course and post them on Blackboard.  A couple of them might be interesting to others outside of my course, so I will also post them here.

One of the blogs I subscribe to is “iLibrarian” written by Ellyssa Kroski. One of her most popular posts has been one from 2007 entitled  “A Librarian’s Guide to Creating 2.0 Subject Guides.”

  In this post she describes several Web 2.0 tools that can be used to create Subject Guides: 

• The first is Squidoo.  Squidoo is a free service that allows you to create a multimedia Subject Guide called a Lens. Kroski provides links to three example Squidoo Lens created by librarians.  One of them,“Using Web 2.0 Tools to Become Librarian 2.0”, is an excellent example of what you can incorporate into a subject guide using Squidoo. (Because this is a free service, Squidoo inserts advertisements on each Lens page.) 

• Another tool Kroski describes in this post is Libguides. This is a subscription service used by college libraries, but the professional interface is worth a look. 

• Kroski also describes the social bookmarking site del.icio.us.  She links to a helpful Swiss Army Librarian post that describes using this tool to create Subject Guides. As examples she links to Chelmsford Public Library  and  Hilton C. Buley Library . There are school library media centers also using del.icio.us like Creekview High School Media Center in Georgia.

I want to add some Web 2.0 created Subject Guides to my library media center site and feel that del.icio.us will be the least time consuming to utilize. Just one look at Creekview’s del.icio.us account proves how useful and powerful this social bookmarking tool can be for busy library media specialists. Using just the basic del.icio.us format, Buffy Hamilton and Ruth Fleet have created master Subject Guide lists for their faculty and students.  Having been a del.icio.us user for some time, I know that these lists are easy to create and can be added to in a few spare moments here and there. And, using the social aspect of this service, media specialists can choose to collaborate with teachers who can add authoritative annotated links to the Subject Guides.

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