Friday, November 25, 2005

Mindmapping seminar 2

A little bit more about the seminar which Bill and I held yesterday in Melbourne, Australia. There were 13 delegates (see some of them on the right), mostly from university libraries. If you aren't familiar with the concept of mindmapping then there is a nice introduction at http://www.jcu.edu.au/studying/services/studyskills/mindmap/. The "father" of mindmapping is Tony Buzan and his website is at http://www.mind-map.com/EN/index.html (there is a lot of information about his priced products and services, but also a short intro to mindmapping).

We were talking about different ways in which this technique can be used. Bill was particularly focusing on its use in stimulating creativity, and I was particularly focusing on its use in information work. In particular, my students in my 1st year Information Literacy class have to use it as a tool for planning & representing searches. I gave a paper about this aspect at the Online conference in December 2002 which is available in pdf at http://dis.shef.ac.uk/sheila/sw-mindmap-2002.pdf