Making Library Information More Accessible

I’m a subject librarian and I want to make it easier for our students to identify which of the many databases which are available to them to use in order to search for information. I’m trying to get away from lists of databases, and I’ve got this idea of a ‘decision support tool’ (not even sure if that’s the right term) which can go on our VLE. It would be a bit like a simple flowchart, through which a student could quickly navigate to identify which database to use in any given situation. I was wondering if you knew of any simple software package that would help me to create this, preferably something free?

Some Possible Solutions

Thanks for your query. I took the opportunity to speak to some of our colleagues from RSCs across the UK and together we have come up with a range of options which might be of interest to you. Where appropriate we have tried to offer some examples or case studies too.

1. Delicious

As your query is subject oriented then couldn’t delicious be used with subject tags linking to relevant databases, journals etc? One our sister RSCs in England referred to an example where a sixth forms has a subject delicious which is displayed via RSS feed (and possibly cloud tag script) on their VLE. Have a look at the following examples which are being used as a bookmarking service.

http://delicious.com/colchviformlibrary

http://delicious.com/RSCni_eResources/

2. Mind Maps

What about using a series of mind maps? The main mind map would contain links to the initial set of databases i.e. links to other mind maps or files which would contain more detailed links to other databases. Navigation would be visually appealing and easy to use. XMind a free (and portable) mind mapping tool would do this. I’ve attached a link to a video which demonstrates some features of xMind

There's a case study of a similar project at Jewel & Esk College the e-Quality Newsletter:

http://www.rsc-ne-scotland.ac.uk/publications.php#e_quality_newsletter_summer_2009

3. Xerte

Another one of our sister RSCs mentioned that they have a college who has recently produced some student induction materials using the free Xerte toolkit. Xerte is an online content creation tool which has very accessible (and easily personalised) outputs and provides a quick way for tutors to create learning objects with built in colour preferences, font size preferences, keyboard navigation and text to speech (when viewed via Internet Explorer only).

More information on Xerte

Brief video outlining Xerte’s features

TechDis will be offering a new series of online sessions to allow you to further explore the online Xerte toolkits. These sessions will cover a number of themes which will build on the past workshops and will provide ideas, guidance and training on using Xerte to produce effective, engaging and accessible resources and learning objects.The ‘flow chart’ aspect could be designed into the Xerte object with some interactivity and made available via VLE!

4. Intute

The other thing to mention is that Intute provide RSS feeds by subject. An example feed

http://www.intute.ac.uk/rss/latest-creativearts.xml

5. Visual Understanding Environment

The Visual Understanding Environment (VUE) is an Open Source project based at Tufts University. The VUE project is focused on creating flexible tools for managing and integrating digital resources in support of teaching, learning and research. VUE provides a flexible visual environment for structuring, presenting, and sharing digital information.

http://vue.tufts.edu/

Where can I find out more about the new technologies that are coming into the mainstream.

The seventh edition of this annual report has just been published and describes emerging technologies likely to have an impact on teaching & learning in Colleges and Universities in the next five years.

The report describes in relatively plain English technologies which you may have heard of but not experienced and outlines with examples how they are already being used in academic institutions. Interestingly once they are broken down a bit you might be surprised just how many of them you use routinely already.

One year or less	Two to Three Years	Four to Five years
Mobile Computing	Electronic Books	Gesture Based Computing
Open Content	Simple Augmented Reality	Visual Data Analysis

Yes - I know what you're thinking but the report provides just a couple of pages on each - enough to whet the appetite e.g. Do you use Sat Nav? Have you needed to find out where the nearest petrol station is? Using a device that combines information based on GPS, a camera or compass could be considered as Simple Augmented Computing. Anyone get a Wii for Christmas? It's hard to think of anything that's more gesture based. And take a look at my favourite websites in the tag cloud down the right hand side of this website - the larger the text the more links in that category - an example of a new form of Visual Data Analysis.

So the report's not just for "Geeks" - and the technologies are actually here already, but the report does give some interesting insight into how they might be employed in the education business.

http://www.nmc.org/pdf/2010-Horizon-Report.pdf