The Impact of New Technologies on Current Awareness Tools in Academic Libraries

Abstract

Cuiying Mu's column is a help to both accidental technologists and non-techie librarians in two ways: it clarifies the differences between and strengths of various RSS readers and social bookmarking tools, and it provides guidance on teaching these tools to our users. This column underscores a similarity of users' technology competencies and needs across different types of libraries and around the world: users don't know what technologies are available to make their work easier. While Mu writes about a program at an academic library, the tools also are applicable to workshops and guides that teach users of public and special libraries how to manage their personal research and even their collection of news and entertainment items from the Internet. Integration of these technologies into K-12 information literacy programs would tie in with teaching how to select credible sources and provide students with a head start on managing their research for term papers. RSS and social bookmarking are not familiar to most of our users; librarians have a role in educating not just about information resources but about tools to manage information.--Editor Our users live in a world of too much information, and they are struggling to keep themselves up-to-date with new publications in their research fields. Academic librarians are aware that information overload can lead to frustration and feelings of despair. To prevent our researchers being drowned in the information floods, academic librarians should teach them to manage information effectively by using the technologies available, such as RSS feeds and social bookmarking tools. New technologies have created opportunities for learners to have richer learning experiences. Academic librarians, as facilitators of the research and information-retrieval process, need to actively apply the new information technologies to information literacy programs and train their users to use the technologies available to remain current with the publications in the student or reseacher's subject field. RSS and social bookmarking are two tools that have a place in libraries' information literacy programs. The purpose of this column is to help you establish or update user education on RRS and social bookmarking. Included is an outline of a current awareness course and users' responses to the course, some technical issues and solutions when working with library databases using RSS feeds alerting service, comparisons of RSS readers and social bookmarking tools, and one librarian's recommended RSS readers and social bookmarking tools for researchers. THREE REASONS TO PROMOTE RSS AND SOCIAL BOOKMARKING Save the Time of the User While these tools have been around for a few years, students and faculty are not always aware of them. Even those who use RSS feeds for reading blogs and news may not know of the usefulness of this tool for their academic lives. Using RSS feed technology to manage information saves users time and energy and increases their access to the knowledge they need by creating a recurring alert of new information from blogs, websites, and article databases. Social bookmarking technology allows users to take advantage of the insights of other users to find information related to the topics they are researching, even in areas that are not obviously connected to the primary topic. (1) Social bookmarking promotes discovery through serendipity as well as through careful use of searching and tags. Enhance Literacy One of the goals of the academic library is to develop users' information literacy skills. Literacy Standard Five of ACRL's Information Literacy Standards for Science and Engineering/Technology states that an information literate student should recognize the need to keep current in his or her subject field and have the ability to use a variety of methods and emerging technologies for keeping current in the field. …