Delicious

I have been an avid user of Delicious for some time now. I LOVE THIS RESOURCE. Not only does it provide an on-line bookmarking program for all your professional resources, it is a great resource for educators to share ideas! Within the context of my UBC classes, I'm adding about a dozen links a week from the weekly lessons or modules. I've added subject key words such as “cataloguing”, “MARC”, “advocacy”, “volunteers”, “budget”, etc. This is especially helpful as a new TL because it allows me to have quick access to quality resources on a “as needed” basis. It is important that delicious links to professional articles and blogs, lesson ideas, collaboration tips, etc., be properly and consistently label. One thing the TL doesn't have a lot of is time – quick and efficient information recall on Delicious is priceless for the teacher-librarian-in-training. 

Of course, the same idea can be applied to the library collection. I work at a small rural school of about 80 students. Classes have about 20 to 30 minutes in the library once a week. With so little time, these time slots need to be useful and efficient. Staff, and especially students, should be able to find the resources they need in a timely manner. Of course, this ties into the issue of effective access to all patrons which we discussed at length earlier in our course. Popular books should be accessible and easy to locate through the use of labeled bins (for example). Signage should be attractive and easy to read. The collection should be organizing as well into effective groupings such as primary, intermediate, secondary and staff resources as well as resources that have seasonal or cultural importance. 

I am currently exploring Delicious to get some decorating ideas for my library. Overall I think Delicious is a great resource that every educator and certainly every TL can find extremely helpful!