Are you looking for some ways to collaborate with colleagues and help users that goes beyond the typical way of emailing documents back and forth? If so you might want to check out the Forbes.com's article, "Nine Easy Web-Based Collaboration Tools." Most of the tools are free or low cost. The article is a little Google heavy, five out of nine tools mention are from Google. But it is an interesting article and might help jumpstart your creative juices.

In addition to the nine Forbes listed (Google Apps For Your Domain, Google Calendar, Google Docs and Spreadsheets, Google Apps Premier Edition, Google Notebook, Zoho, Bluetie, Basecamp, and Wikis) there are some other that you might consider.

RefWorks -More costly than the freebie (or near free) software in the article, but if your institution already uses RefMan or EndNote you might be pleasantly surprised at how RefWorks can help your researchers share research, citations, and import and organize RSS feeds. If you think of RefWorks as a traditional reference manager program then you are missing out on some its best features that set it apart from other traditional products.

Meebo -Free web messenger that allows you to access IM from anywhere and supports msn, yahoo, aol, google, icq, and jabber. Meebo and the Meebo Me widget can make chat ref a possiblity to some smaller or cash strapped libraries. Some drawbacks are that some institutions block Meebo. However, if you are interested in providing chat ref to your users, why not present your case to your IT department as to why Meebo should be unblocked.

aNobii - Allows you to create, share and explore booklists. Similar to LibraryThing you can catalog, rate, tag and comment on items. Unlike LibraryThing, aNobiii allows you to track your by progress by adding the book into one five categories (Not Started, Finished, Reading, Unfinished, Reference) and has a circulation feature. The circulation feature allow you to keep track of what books you have loaned and to whom but it also allows you to automatically send out reminders for late books. While aNobii might be directed towards avid readers for personal use, it also might work well for very small libraries. Who knows.

Connotea.org and CiteULike.org - Are two social bookmarking sites. Connotea.org is primarily used by medical researchers and clinicians to track references and academics use CiteULike.org to share, store and organize academic papers. Both free, Connotea (created by Nature Publishing Group) and CiteULike are very similar. With the click of a button users can add online papers or websites to their personal library.

What collaboration tools do you like or are using and why?

Labels: Social Software