Monday, November 06, 2006

Thanks a bundle, librarians!

Kathryn Greenhill of Librarians Matter demonstrates how librarians are becoming expert bundlers by using technology to gather relevant materials for patrons and making it easily accessible. In her post, Librarian bundles for philosophy scholars Kathryn describes how she used Google's Custom Search Engine, toolbars, and RSS to assemble philosophy resources for patrons. She includes examples of each of these tactics along with how-to's - very neat!

In marketing terms, I see this as adding value to our services by packaging them so that they make sense to patrons while making it easy for them to find just what they need. For me, helping patrons make meaning of the massive amount of information out there is the most important and marketing-savvy thing we can do and I hope we'll see more initiatives like what Kathryn describes.

Does anyone have other examples of packaging like this to share?

Categories: creativity_and_inspiration | technology_tools

2 comments:

Kathryn Greenhill said...

Thanks for picking this one up Jill.

Customised Search Engines are so easy to make with Google Co-Op, I can see us creating them in response to a single query about appropriate resources - eg. for a political essay bundling a search on CIA factbook, United Nations home pages, Democrat/Republican senators home pages and press releases...

or even better, teaching our users how to do them for themselves.

Jill said...

Very cool, Kathryn! :-)