Tools to Try

While poking around Project Bamboo, I followed a lot of trails that led me to tools that sounded interesting, but which didn’t seem to have a practical application that I could entirely understand.

But there were two sites I stumbled across that intrigued me.

One is All Our Ideas (allourideas.org), which combines surveys and crowdsourcing.  To a degree, it works kind of like Kitten War: under a given topic, two options pop up and you can vote on which you prefer; there is also an ‘I Can’t Decide’ button, and a blank field where you can contribute your own idea, which makes the survey a constantly evolving entity.  As people vote on the successive pairs of options, the favored ideas bubble up to the top.

The sample survey is one relevant to us all: it looks at options for a greener New York City.  It was difficult for me to STOP voting (I have a lot of opinions).  I’m not thinking this would be useful for the Morningside Heights project, but rather for the Developing Librarian project itself.  When we are faced with difficult decisions about where to go next, or what to prioritize, this site could help.

The other tool that caught my attention is called Exploratree (www.exploratree.org.uk) (the play on words works better with a UK pronunciation).  It offers a series of templates–or, ‘thinking guides’– that help organize workflows for projects.  As wecontinue our collaborative work, it might help clarify our thinking to slot our tasks into one of the flowcharts on this site.

Karen Green

Author: Karen Green

Karen Green has worked at the Columbia University Libraries as librarian for Ancient & Medieval History since 2002, and has been the Graphic Novels librarian since 2005. In 2015, she also became adjunct curator for Comics and Cartoons in Columbia’s Rare Book & Manuscript Library. She has a B.A. from NYU in Medieval and Renaissance Studies, an M.A. and M.Phil. from Columbia University in Medieval History, and an M.L.I.S. from Rutgers University. Karen believes that no one is defined by the relatively narrow set of interests that constitute their official job responsibilities (evidenced, at the very least, by her expansion into comics three years into her job at Columbia). Having lived in New York City since 1978, and loved the city since first visiting in 1969, she is particularly excited by the historical exploration that drives the Morningside Project. Her subject of inquiry is the Lion Brewery, once situated on Columbus Avenue between 107th and 109th Streets, a choice driven in part by her fifteen years as a bartender in NYC (1978-1993).