Maya Munson

Curation of Sites
LIS 724
7/9/18

● Symbaloo: https://www.symbaloo.com/home/mix/13ePBiNIEV
● Scoop.it: https://www.scoop.it/t/school-librarianship-by-mj-munson
● Listly: https://list.ly/l/2Fg0

For this curation project, I chose to populate Symbaloo, Scoop.it, and Listly with the same
15 web-based resources. The resources were chosen based on personal experience and
recommendations. Given their organization, communication, networking, collaboration,
engagement and presenting features and tools, these resources seemed particularly helpful
for the school librarian. For the purpose of this assignment, my chosen resources were
chunked into three broad categories (as permitted by each site): Communication &
Organization, Engagement & Interaction, and Professional Resources.

I started with Symbaloo, which was recommended to me by a colleague. I found that it was
really easy to navigate, a simple process, and the finished product was aesthetically
pleasing. Using Symbaloo, I was able to choose some of the best resources, create my own
labels on the tiles, use images as anchors, and arrange my resources into my three
designated categories with plenty of built-in ‘white space’. Though there was no
opportunity to provide an intro describing what each of the resources were, I was
otherwise able to follow all of Gonzalez’ other curation guidelines. Further, I really liked
that my free account would allow me to create multiple webmixes, providing opportunity
to cater to specific audiences and purposes.

The second curation site I explored was Scoop.it, chosen because it was a resource I was
completely unfamiliar with. Similar to Symbaloo, Scoop.it helps users to be curators rather
than dumpers by adding intros, using images as anchors, and polishing hyperlinks.
However, I was unable to figure out how to chunk and carefully organize resources to allow
for more whitespace using Scoop.it and it is generally a lot busier than Symbaloo, which I
found to be a bit overwhelming. I did enjoy that Scoop.it provides recommendations for
relevant resources that were published by other users, which would help to expand my
PLN.

I chose Listly as my last curation site, another resource that was completely new to me.
Like the others, Listly allows users to follow Gonzalez’ guidelines, creating an easy to
navigate collection that would actually be useful and helpful for others. Though I was able
to chunk my resources on my end, I was not able to intentionally designate my categories
for the users. If I had more resources ready to curate for each category, I think it would be
beneficial to create different lists for each of them, allowing clearly labeled and obvious
chunking for user convenience.

Overall, I enjoyed curating using Listly, Symbaloo and Scoop.It (in that order) and I can
definitely see how each of these sites would be useful curation tools for school librarians.
Though each of the sites were different, I found that they were all great tools to help me
develop my PLN. By saving and keeping track of valuable resources for my own
professional and personal use, I am taking advantage of opportunities to organize,
communicate and collaborate with others, and promote interaction and engagement with
students and their families.