Published January 29, 2007

Back to the future – Zenome recreates the collegial library on-line

Zsolt Szigetvari Teacher, Dawson College

Inspired by the venerable card catalogues in libraries of yesteryear, Zsolt Szigetvari, a media studies teacher at Dawson College, has created a way to make browsing on the web less like a popularity contest. An experienced on-line teacher, he has taken the fruits of his experience with on-line courses and built a site called ‘Zenome’, which is an on-line directory that organizes material by communities of interest. For example, Zenome links students of urban design researching the topic of Paris to material on Notre Dame Cathedral and not to news about Paris Hilton. He calls his idea ‘a directory of communities’. In such a community, like minded people, real people, work together to evaluate resources on the web that relate to a subject of common interest.