SPLAT presented at ILA Region IV (that’s the Magic Valley region, y’all) last Thursday, and we had a good time sharing some really cool web tools. Jezmynne shared her experiences with Last Pass and a few other password managers; you can find her previous SPLAT post here. And Heidi gave us a quick and dirty introduction to Pinterest, which definitely piqed my interest. I talked about Diigo.

What is Diigo, you ask? Well, it’s a fun little tool designed to be a step beyond a simple bookmarking site. I have loved Delicious, but often want to label things (or simply remind myself why I saved a site in the first place). With Diigo, you can highlight items on a site, even capture photos or other graphics, write sticky notes, and then share them with a group. This works really well when you want to work collaboratively but hate to have to email someone every time you want to share a site.*

Another neat thing about Diigo is that it’s saved in “the cloud” (I totally want an echoing microphone every time I say that phrase). You can access your notes and saved sites from most mobile devices – and you can save things to read later. You can even upload stuff from your phone – like notes or photos – to research when you get home or wherever your laptop is living.

Since you can create folders and groups, Diigo can help you streamline a project, or in my case, help you remember what was so cool about the site you saved at 3 AM. I use this at home when I come across an idea that I think would be great for the library, but don’t have the time to delve into it (usually at the aforementioned time of 3 AM). But I can also see how teacher librarians could use this to help gather resources for a subject or class. Can you guys think of any other great ways?

*First, I love footnotes – just warning you. Second, if you click onto Diigo‘s website, they have a short, albeit dorky-looking, video that explains some of this. The information you glean is interesting, but the execution leaves something to be desired…