LibGuides: I'm Not a Librarian, I'm a Curator: Curation Tools

Types of Curated Content

1. Expert Tips: Aggregate tips from various experts in your industry on a given topic.

2. Presentations/Webinars: Good presenters and speakers are making their presentation slides and webinar archives available online in sites like SlideShare. Aggregate the best presentations on a specific topic and embed the presentations in a blog or LibGuide.

3. Quotations: Adding graphics can improve the visual appeal.

4. Case Studies : People like seeing what other people have done, good and bad.

5. Industry Blogs/Sites: Aggregate a list and offer brief descriptions of the top blogs in your industry or on certain topics.

6. Infographics: Add value and context by sharing your opinions.

7. Statistics, Data, Charts, and Graphs : Compile the top statistics for particular industries or issues into one comprehensive resource. Or compile a list of the most interesting charts/graphs.

8. Videos: Collections of the best how-to videos would be helpful, rather than leaving people to the chaos of YouTube.

9. Books/Ebooks: Create reading lists for must-read books or ebooks you think would be valuable for your audience to read.

10. Industry Examples: Compile screenshots of web designs for web designers or great landscaping jobs for landscape architects. But it's not really curated content unless you then highlight what's good and why.

Types of Tools

Aggregators - multiple sources feed to one place
Content Discovery - feeds based on keywords and trends
Discovery and Delivery - content discovery and publishing with one tool
All-in-one - discovery, organization, and sharing from a central source
Content Planning - taking original and curated content and organizing it for review/approval and publishing

ContentGems
Monitors 200,000 RSS feeds and social media accounts and finds content that matches your custom keywords. The nicest part of ContentGems is how often it scans the Web for new content, which helps with real-time curation. Freemium and premium options available.
Delicious
A social bookmarks manager. Using bookmarklets, you can add bookmarks to your list and categorize them.
Digg
What the internet is talking about right now. The most interesting and talked about stories, videos and pictures on the web. Breaking news particularly in the areas of technology, politics, and entertainment.
Diigo
Annotation tools (digital highlighters and sticky notes); keep bookmarks private, share as part of a group, or make public; join groups and follow bookmarks posted by others
eduClipper
A free educational social platform for educators and students. The most useful feature for educators is the ability to create class boards to share with students. Teachers can create classes in their eduClipper account. Students can join the class and make contributions to the class board. The teacher has complete control over the content that is shared and the comments written on each board.
ExploraTree
ExploraTree is a free web resource where you can access a library of ready-made interactive thinking guides which can support students' projects and research. Guides can be edited, printed or create new ones. You can share them and work on them in groups.
Feedly
Feedly has been around for a while but has become more popular since the end of Google Reader. Feedly enables you to add content by URL, title, and topic. It is great for blog post aggregation but doesn’t pull in other forms of content (such as images). Free and premium versions available.
Findery
The developers of Findery describe their product as a way "to help you tease out local knowledge, hidden secrets, stories and information about the world around you. You can annotate places in the real world, leave notes tagged to a specific geographic location—an address, a street corner, a stream, a park bench, a rock at the end of a road."
iFlow
A part dashboard, part discovery tool. The interface looks very similar to Google Reader and helps you to find content based on keywords and topics. It is another tool that helps with real-time discovery and sharing.
IFTTT (If This Then That)
Enables users to connect different web applications (e.g., Facebook, Evernote, Weather, Dropbox, etc.) together through simple conditional statements known as "Recipes".
Individurls
One of the most basic aggregators, free, and and very similar to Feedly.com. The best part of Individurls is the ease in which content scanning takes place and is replicated on your mobile phone for discovery on the move.
Learnist
Described as “Pinterest for education,” initially developed for K-12 teachers and students, allowing users to create “learn boards” for everything from reading assignments to Common Core-supported Math lessons, but the founders have since expanded that scope in an effort to attract a wider set of life-long and casual learners.
LiveBinders
LiveBinders is a way to organize sites and information that you want to share simply and clearly – just like a 3-ring binder in the physical world.
Mendeley
A desktop and web program for managing and sharing research papers, discovering research data and collaborating online. It combines Mendeley Desktop, a PDF and reference management application with Mendeley Web, an online social network for researchers.
NetVibes
Social media monitoring. NetVibes is one of the original content aggregation dashboards and still one of the best. The best feature of NetVibes is the abundance of ready-made feeds and widgets that can get you up and running in minutes. Free and premium versions are available.
Paper.li
Be a publisher, create an online newspaper
PearlTrees
A visual and collaborative curation tool that allows users to collect, organize and share any URL they find online as well as to upload personal photos and notes. The product features a unique visual interface that allows users to drag and organize collected URLs into units called pearls that themselves can be further organized in a hierarchical structure
Pinterest
Bulletin-board-style social web-sharing tool; Create and manage topic based collections; Share pins on Facebook and Twitter; Subject specific categories
Pocket
Formerly Read It Later. Put articles, videos or pretty much anything into Pocket. Save directly from your browser or from apps like Twitter, Flipboard, Pulse and Zite. If it's in Pocket, it's on your phone, tablet or computer. You don't even need an Internet connection.
ProtoPage
ProtoPage is worth consideration as it gives you the most manual control over relevant content. A benefit of this free service is the bookmark-style dashboard which reminds you to manually consult non-blog platforms such as Pinterest and Instagram. You can even set up Twitter hashtag feeds to monitor multiple conversations relevant to you.
Redditt
Entertainment, social networking service and news website where registered community members can submit content, such as text posts or direct links. Only registered users can then vote submissions "up" or "down" to organize the posts and determine their position on the site's pages. Content entries are organized by areas of interest called "subreddits".
ScoopIt
Be the curator of your favourite topic. Build engaged audiences through publishing by curation.
Scrible
Annotate webpages, There’s nothing to install or download, and you can choose to use it as either a bookmark right on your toolbar or as a browser extension. If you choose to sign up for a free account, you can now save your annotated web page to your Scrible account online, making it simple to retrieve later.
Sqworl
Sqworl is a web application that provides a clean and simple way to visually bookmark multiple URLs. Make a personalized homepage for yourself. Take notes when comparing items. Create a step-by-step tutorial for other users.
Storify
Make the web tell a story. Lets the user create stories or timelines using other social media tools such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
Symbaloo
Symbaloo is a personal startpage that allows you to easily navigate the web and compile your favorite site all in to one visual interface. Save your bookmarks in the cloud and access them from anywhere with any device. Education version
Zotero
Free and open-source reference management software to manage bibliographic data and related research materials (such as PDF files). Notable features include web browser integration, online syncing, generation of in-text citations, footnotes and bibliographies, as well as integration with the word processors