beccablog, teacher-librarian

I’m back from AASL & contemplating the various resources from the presentations.
I recently redesigned my library web page – hoping to eliminate the many clicks to get to good sources. This thinking was validated through the conference… In a workshop with ProQuest – SIRS Researcher, they discussed RSS feeds, creating widgets, and other interactive tools that could make the databases competitive with Google (yes, I know – do we even attempt to compete with Google?) Joyce Valenza discussed using iGoogle with her kids & would like feeds from the databases in iGoogle.

So my dream -
Could libraries allow students to create a page (like an igoogle) where it searches the entire library site at the top with many widgets to helpful tools that students could customize to their needs? Depending on the class, students would have information directed to the created page from us… They could continue to customize it to fit their needs & we could use it also as a formative assessment…
Just a dream at this moment…

But for now, I am continuing to take away the clicks… I updated the Find a Book site on the library web page. It allows users to search novelist right on the page. I love it! Now, if we could have a search box from our online catalog on this page… Thanks to the Johnson County Public Library page for inspiring me with great ideas!