Thing 6

I had previously put a Netvibes site together to collate current awareness from a variety of sources. However it wasn't well used despite lots of publicity. My users commented that they didn't have the time or didn't remember to visit another website and wanted the information to land in their inboxes. Not sure if you can sign up to alerts on Netvibes that inform of new content when its added, but it's something I could explore. Again though if the alerts rely on users signing up then it's something that won't happen.

It's been great exploring personal pages, twitter, delicious, using bookmarks and tags. These tools are great on their own but bring them together and the information can be delivered right to your fingertips. A program like Netvibes makes this easy and possible and brings everything together in one place.

This does have great potential for the librarian responsible for staying up to date, but then it's the question of how  to share and disseminate that information to patrons that want everything done for them.

For the willing and IT savvy library users then these tools can be recommended to help them manage their information efficiently. For the savvy ones who might use these services already it is a simple case of them subscribing to the library content.

As this is the last thing,  I would like to say what an interesting few weeks it has been. Old questions have been answered and some new ones generated. I have re-explored some tools and discovered new ones. I will certainly be looking to use some the tools in the future.