Tuesday, March 8, 2016

Thing 5: Curation

I just finished an interesting article about Curation by Joyce Valenza.  I learned what digital curation was and the role that school librarians are playing in this field.  The article is spot-on.  Librarians often have their fingers on current information for just about any topic.  However, I don't want the public to feel that all librarians have the time to gather information, pour through articles to determine what is relevant, and sufficiently categorize it all into proper fields.  On most days, I teach 7 classes which means no breaks and just a 10 minute lunch (if I'm lucky).  I envy the librarians who monitor the library and actually have time to help patrons when needed.  But I definitely see the need for this skill and I often am at a loss when looking up a certain topic and then have to weed through too many articles to find accurate information.  I also like the information near the end of the article to visit the LibGuide site to access the portal to thousands of curated guides.  That's where I'm off to next.