Week 4 Reflect Activity

I feel that while librarians could use online curation tools to create collections of web content it would ultimately have a limited scope. It could be useful for a library to collect web content relating to the local community; although with so many people already curating their own content I do not see it being a worthwhile use of a librarian's time. A quick Bundlr search for Brisbane came up with a number of collections. When this work is already done by members of the community it would be a better use of a librarians time to utilise micro-blogging tools such as Twitter to make people aware of web content collections that are already available. This would lessen the prospective workload for a librarian in providing easy access to web content for library users in their community.

I do however think that the tools would be easily used by libraries by simply setting up an account. For example I chose to use Bundlr in this weeks play activity and found it very simple to set up an account and then embed my collections in a web page such as this blog. If a librarian decides that it would useful for them to curate their own web content, it would be very easy to set up an account and allow all librarians to access and add to the collections. I could see this being relevant when a public library runs a particular event. If there are any photos or footage from the event it would be easy to collect the information in one place for people who are interested. By using a site such as Bundlr it may be possible for interested people who do not regularly check the library's site to come across this information. Then it would also be a simple matter of linking to the content via the website or Twitter.

Overall I think a library could make use of technology that curates web content but it is only really worthwhile if the content is related to the library specifically.

Week 4 Play Activity

Week 4's play activity was to use a curation tool. I chose to use Bundlr as it was recommended and I found that I liked the user interface. I chose to collect amateur videos of heavy metal bands that have played in Brisbane. I wanted to give a window into viewing the band from within the crowd, as professional videos almost never show this. Because of this the sound and video quality varies greatly in the collection but this could not be avoided. This was an interesting experience for me as I was personally in the crowd for most of the videos.